






*y 












o N 















% 














OO' 















THE LYRICS AND MINOR POEMS 



OF 



Percy Bysshe Shelley 






By JOSEPH SKIPSEY. 

i 



* 



JAMES POTT & CO., 
14 & 16 Astor Place. 

1885. 



.Si 



48 65 55 

AUG 1 4 1942 



Zhc Canterbury poets, 

NEW EDITION OF THE POETS, 
Edited by Joseph Skipsey, Author of "Lyric Poems." 

In Shilling Monthly Volumes, Square Svo, well 
printed on Toned Paper, with Red-Line Border on 
each Page, Strongly bound in Cloth, with Artistic 
Design on Cover. Each Volume will contain 288 
pages, including an original Introductory Notice, 
biographical and critical, by various Contributors. 
The first volume will be Coleridge, followed by 
Shelley, Longfellow, Blake, Poe, Campbell, 
Wordsworth, Chatterton, Marlowe {a 
selection), BALLADS, MlLTON (2 vols.), WHITTIER, 
Keble, Burns (2 vols.), etc. 



Arrangements have been made to publish a new 
edition of the Britisli and American Poets, in which 
the desirabilities of clear and readable type, excellence 
in quality of paper, handiness in size, and elegancy 
in general get up, will be combined in a way so as to 
render them ornaments to the bookcase, or suitable as a 
series of pocket volumes, while the price at which they 
will be published will place them within the reach of 
every reader, however humble in circumstance. 

In the present issue quantity will be an important 
feature. Quality will, first of all, be considered, and 
side by side with a popular poet, such as Burns or Long- 
fellow, will at intervals appear a Chatterton or a Blake, 
and one or two others whose works have never yet 
hitherto appeared in a cheap series, and scarcely in any 
series whatever, and the splendour of whose genius is 
only known to a select few. 




CONTENTS. 



Page 
Prefatory Notice 9 

Alastor ; or, The Spirit of Solitude . .33 

To Coleridge 57 

Stanzas — April 1814 58 

Mutability 60 

On Death 60 

A Summer-Evening Churchyard . . . .62 

^To Wordsworth 63 

Feelings of a Republican on the fall of Bonaparte . 61 
Lines (The cold Earth slept below) . . .61 
The Sunset QQ 

^•Hymn to Intellectual Beauty . . 68 

Mont Blanc ... .... 71 

Julian and Maddalo 76 



CONTENTS. 



Marianne's Dream # 

Death .... 

To Constantia, Singing. 
Sonnet — Ozymandias . 
To the Lord Chancellor 
To William Shelley 

Lines (That time is dead for ever, child) 
On Fanny Godwin 
Lines to a Critic . 
Passage of the Apennines 
On a Dead Violet 
The Past 

Sonnet (Lift not the painted veil) 
Lines written among the Euganean Hills 
^rtStanzas (The sun is warm, the sky is clear) 
Misery ...... 

The Witch of Atlas .... 

The Masque of Anarchy 

Lines (Corpses are cold in the tomb) 

Song— To the Men of England 

England in 1819 

Similes for Two Political Characters of 1819 



CONTENTS. 




vii 


Cod Save the Queen .... 


Page 

. 171 


Ode to the Asserters of Liberty 






173 


Ode to Heaven .... 






174 


S&le to the West Wind 






176 


An Exhortation .... 






179 


The Indian Serenade 






180 


Lines written for Miss Sophia Stacey 






181 


Epipsychidion .... 






182 


Love's Philosophy 






203 


Ode to Liberty .... 






204 


— "Arethusa .... 






213 


^■Hymn of Apollo .... 






216 


Hymn of Pan .... 






218 


^The Question .... 






219 


The Sensitive Plant 






221 


^Tlie Cloud 






232 


^To a Skylark .... 






235 


To . (I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden) 




239 


The Two Spirits . 




239 


Song of Proserpine .... 




241 


Letter to Maria Gisborne 




242 


Ode to Naples 




. 252 


Summer and Winter .... 




258 



Vlll 



CONTENTS. 



Lines to a Reviewer 

Autumn. — A Dirge 

Liberty .... 

The Tower of Famine . 

Time long past 

Good-night .... 

Sonnet (Ye hasten to the dead) 

donais .... 
Dirge for the year 
To Night .... 
From the Arabic 

Song (Rarely, rarely comest thou) 
To Emilia Vivian i 
Lines (Far, far away) 
Time .... 




Page 
259 

259 

260 

261 

262 

262 

263 

264 

282 

283 

284 

285 

287 

287 

288 




prefatory IRotice. 




F the mighty singer who produced 
the immortal poems contained in 
this volume — Shelley — that " pard- 
like spirit, beautiful and swift," a 
few words, and a few words only, 
by way of preface. Percy Bysshe 
Shelley was the eldest son of Mr. (afterwards Sir) 
Timothy and Elizabeth Shelley, and was born at 
Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, on the 4th of 
August 1792. " He was a beautiful boy," says his 
excellent critic and biographer, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, 
" with ringlets, deep blue eyes, a snowy com- 
plexion and exquisitely formed hands and feet," and 
he was remarkable for his gentleness and sweet- 
ness of disposition. From childhood he was in the 
highest degree sensitive, and too keenly alive to all 



PRE FA TOR Y NOTICE. 



discordant influences, physical and mental, to feel 
at all at ease in mixed and unruly companies. 
Mere clownishness of manners he could put up 
with, but coarseness of lauguage and sordidness of 
disposition excited his disgust ; and of this he had 
more than enough at Sion House School, Brent- 
ford, to which he was sent when he was about ten 
years old. " The pupils here were mostly boys," 
says Mr. Rossetti, " numbering about sixty, sons of 
local tradesmen ; the system of the house was 
mean," and the reception accorded to Shelley 
by his school-fellows, and their subsequent treat- 
ment of him, " full of taunting and petty 
persecution." Girlish in appearance and averse to 
rough sports, he was naturally enough deemed a 
proper butt for the jibes of the ruder boys ; and 
notwithstanding the fact that, when thoroughly 
aroused, he would display a courage and determin- 
ation, before which the boldest of his juvenile 
opponents for the moment would quail— such a 
butt he was so often made as to make his 
" situation one of acute misery." The effect of this 
upon his after-career was clearly enormous, since 
he was forced at the very outset of his life 
to have a powerful dislike for human haunts— for 
the actual and the real ; and had his soul not been 
formed of the very essence of love, he, in all 



PRE FA TOR Y NOTICE. 



likelihood, had sunk into a mere sneerer and a 
man-hater. This, thank God, he could not become ; 
and the more he suffered the more he only felt for 
others who suffered likewise, and the more he was 
impelled to seek out a remedy for the evils of 
which he and they were the victims. In this 
search the painful fact burst upon his young mind, 
that the evils of which he complained were only a 
specimen of what dominated the world at large, 
and that only could be a panacea for the one which 
should embrace the whole. And how was that to 
be effected ? By a moral warfare, in which he and 
no other should be the hero ! " And from that 
hour " he afterwards sang : — 

" And from that hour did I with earnest thought 
Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore, 

Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught, 
I cared to learn — but from that secret store 

Wrought linked armour for my soul before 
It might go forth to war among mankind." 

Thus while yet a boy in years he foresaw, and 
began to prepare for the struggle — the intellectual 
war against social, political, and religious wrong — 
that in later years he was to enter into, and which 
was to last till the hour of his death. Shelley's 
career, with some brief intervals of quietude and 
joy, was indeed one of pain and strife from the 



PRE FA TOR Y NO TICE. 



A moral hero he was if there 
ever was one, and when we consider the purity of 
his motives, and, in general, the nobleness of the 
objects — truth, justice, and freedom — for which he 
always strove, it would not be too much to say 
that he merits the respect of the good and the 
wise, apart from any honour due to him for the 
many immortal poems he has left behind for our 
wonder and delight. In his fourteenth year he went 
to Eton, where, besides studying the Greek and 
Roman classics, for which, we are told, he had an 
especial capacity, he was soon found to be also a 
student of " mines of forbidden lore." " He 
studied the occult sciences, watched for spectres, 
conjured the devil, and speculated on a visit to 
Africa," says Mr. Rossetti, "for the purpose of 
searching out the magic arcana which her dusky 
populations are noted for." Of course this could 
only be accounted for on the supposition that the 
youth had a hopelessly perverse disposition — if, 
indeed, he was not mad. So deemed the graver 
Etonians, and many freaks are related that had 
half justified their suspicions, had the rich produce 
of his gifts not been left to show that, however 
unusual his conduct may have appeared, such 
eccentricity was only the natural result of a great 
inner force — a genius in this case of an almost 



PRE FA TOR Y NO TICE. 



incomprehensible magnitude — seeking, and, as yet, 
seeking in vain for an expression. This the 
Etonians did not understand, and so felt themselves 
justified in treating the girlish-faced youth with 
even a greater degree of harshness and rudeness 
than it had been his misfortune to endure at Sion 
House— though this they were not always allowed 
to do with impunity. If the youth was not mad, 
the cruelty to which he was so often subjected was 
enough to make him so ; and we are not surprised 
on being told that, in a fit of rage caused by some 
impish persecution on a certain occasion, "he stuck 
a penknife through the offender's hand." For this 
offence we are left to suppose that he was expelled 
from Eton ; and are informed that he had been 
twice expelled before. If this be true — for the 
truth of the statement is doubted — then the more 
shame to the Eton authorities for not having taken 
steps to put an end to the persecution which 
resulted in the scenes of which they complained. 
The agony which drove the youth to so act must 
have been great indeed, and the effect of its 
relation becomes doubly painful when we learn 
that, amid all this, he was attacked by a brain fever, 
during which he was only saved from being sent 
to a madhouse by the interposition of a Dr. Lind, 
"who posted to Field Place," at the poet's re- 



1 4 PRE FA TOR Y NO TICE. 

quest— " satisfied his father" as to the state of 
affairs, and "cured him" of his affliction. A silver 
lining is afforded to the black cloud which hung 
over our poet at this period through the intelligent 
sympathy of this good doctor. " He loved me," 
said Shelley, "and I shall never forget our long 
talks, where he breathed the spirit of kindest 
tolerance and the purest wisdom." All honour 
then to the doctor, for what immense debt may we 
not all owe him for the beneficial results of these 
" long talks ? " Another drop of honey was let fall 
into Shelley's cup of gall about this time through 
a certain tender feeling he had wakened in the 
heart of his cousin, Harriet Grove. "He loved 
her," it is said, " and she returned his affections." 
They corresponded and were to marry ; yet I 
venture to say that the love on one side was rather 
pity for the sufferings of the other, and the love 
on the other was rather a deep sense of thankful- 
ness at his having found one — and that one of the 
gentler sex — who could appreciate his troubles, 
than that passion which in the highest sense can 
only be called love, and which melts and fuses two 
souls into one. Generosity or selfishness may cause 
two human beings to be put together as man 
and wife, but the passion here spoken of, and that 
only, can sanctify the marriage knot. This the 



PRE FA TOR Y NO TICK. 1 5 



world does not understand, and won't try, and 
broken hearts are the consequence ; the grey- 
headed too often laugh the sacredness of the 
passion to scorn, and even the young are far from 
being able at all times to set it at its proper value. 
Even Shelley in his early youth failed to do so. 
Chivalric feelings or brotherly and sisterly affection 
were mistaken for the celestial fire, and hence his 
errors in this way. At a later period no one had 
ever a clearer conception of the matter, and instead 
of a promise of marriage, a feeling like that 
which existed between him and his cousin Harriet 
would have found ventilation in song, and so have 
ended, only at the time he left Eton his song 
gift was not in blossom. Shelley's genius, by the 
way, could not be said to have had a premature 
development ; none of his literary efforts up to the 
time he left Eton are held to possess much 
merit. This was in the year 1809. In 1810 he 
went to Oxford, from whence he was expelled in 181 1 
for what was deemed a much graver offence than 
any that had been laid to his charge at Eton— viz., 
that of printing and causing to be circulated a 
pamphlet entitled, The Necessity for Atheism. In 
the same year he married — not the cousin Harriet 
just mentioned, but Harriet Westbrook, a school- 
girl of sixteen, and a retired hotel-keeper's daughter. 



1 6 PRE FA TOR Y NO TICE. 

Of all the misfortunes that ever befell Shelley, that 
of his early death excepted, this marriage was by 
far the greatest. Harriet Grove, out of sympathy 
for Shelley's sufferings, had at one time thought her- 
self sufficiently in love to have been justified in 
becoming his wife ; Shelley in a similar way, out 
of pity for certain troubles of Harriet Westbrook, 
had been induced to become her husband. " Harriet 
was not only delightful to look at," says Mr. 
Rossetti, " but altogether most agreeable. She 
dressed with exquisite neatness and propriety ; her 
voice was pleasant and her speech cordial ; 
her spirits were cheerful and her manners good." 
She was withal, " well-educated," a " pleasant 
reader," and well skilled in music. Surely with 
such a woman the best of men — and Shelley was 
one of the best of men — might have lived, one 
would naturally have thought, on the best of terms ? 
And for a short time he did so ; then — the world has 
long known what afterwards befell, and the reason 
of the dire calamity lay in the fact that Shelley had 
mistaken pity for something else, and that in 
reality he had never truly loved the woman he had 
taken to be his wife. His error was a huge one, 
and the cooling down of his affection, then dis- 
cord, then separation, then suicide on the wife's 
part, was the consequence. The weakest in this 



PRE FA TOR Y NO TICE. 1 7 

case, as in others, went to the wall ; but let it not 
for a moment be supposed that the strongest 
passed on unscathed. An avenging Nemesis 
followed the young poet's footsteps to the end, and 
the furies of Regret, Remorse, and Shame threw 
their raven shadow o'er his life, and his soul — at 
least so long as it remained tagged to his frail 
body — his " soul from out that shadow was lifted 
nevermore ! " Such at least is my conviction, 
and I would hail with delight any reliable account 
that would lead me to a happier conclusion. I do 
not think that Shelley was guilty of any wilful 
wrong, but the gravity of the errors he committed 
in his marriage of, and then separation from, 
Harriet, leading as they did to the most tragic 
consequences, were such as to smite his sensitive 
being to the centre ; and if any proofs were wanting 
for this more than are afforded by the facts of his 
outer life, we have only to refer to his songs, which 
in Shelley's case were, even far more than the 
songs of Byron were in his, a veritable reflection of 
the inner man. His " sweetest songs" at all times 
were those which told of " saddest thought ; " but 
after the tragical death of Harriet, and his union 
with Mary Godwin, with whom he had eloped on 
parting from Harriet, the sorrow of his songs, and 
more especially of his greatest ones, grew deeper 



i8 PRE FA TOR Y NO TICE. 

and deeper. The surprising fecundity of his 
genius after his second marriage is ascribed in 
some measure to the harmony which prevailed 
between him and his second wife, and this 
too may have been without at all affecting the 
truth of my intimations. Poetry is an art as 
well as an inspiration, and quietude and social 
harmony are among the essentials for its success- 
ful cultivation ; but these may exist while the soul 
itself is carried away through the force of bitter 
memories to "look on the past and stare aghast at 
the spectres wailing pale and ghast, of hopes which 
thou and I beguiled to death on life's dark river ! " 
What a sigh ! and what a world of pain and 
mental torment are discovered by these few words 
in inverted commas, and yet these are from a lyric 
penned in 1817, and when he was the husband of 
his truly beloved Mary Godwin. Without casting 
any aspersions on poor Harriet — for in years she 
was only a girl (and he was little more than a boy) — 
during her connection with Shelley, it ought to be 
said, however, that it is some credit to Mary that 
our bard's genius found a free, high, and triumph- 
ant expression under her care. During his 
connection with Harriet he had produced his first 
great effort in verse, the " Queen Mab," but after 
his second marriage every succeeding year had its 



PREFA TOR Y NO TICE. 19 

immortal product. First of that glorious progeny 
came " Alastor," 1816 ; then the "Revolt of Islam," 
1817; then the " Rosalind and Helen," and " Julian 
and Maddalo" both 1818 ; then "The Cenci," 
1 819; the "Witch of Atlaw" and the "Prome- 
theus Unbound,'' 1820; the " Epipsychidion," the 
"Adonais," and the "Hellas," all in 1821 ; and he 
was engaged on other works when death by 
drowning put an end to his career on the 4th of 
July 1822. Such a career ! Besides the great 
poems named, he, during the same wonderful 
period, poured forth a flood of lyrics and lesser 
pieces which in themselves had won for him a 
rank only second to the highest in literature. The 
great poems named raise him among those who 
occupy the highest rank. In many of his pieces 
he displayed too strong a predilection for the 
merely fanciful, but his greatest efforts are noted 
beyond these of all other poets since Milton for 
the magnificent and the sublime. In sublimity he 
was only surpassed by Milton and Shakespeare, and 
" no, nobody," says Leigh Hunt, " had a style so 
Orphic. His poetry is so full of mountains, 
seas, and skies, of light and darkness, and the 
seasons, and all the elements of our being, as 
if Nature herself had written it with the creation 
and its hopes newly cast around her ; but it 



PRE FA TOR Y NO TICE. 



must be confessed not without too indiscriminate 
a mixture of great and small, and a want of 
sufficient shade — a certain chaotic brilliancy, 
'dark with excess of light.'" Besides this fault, 
which arises out of a plethora of fancy, there is 
another which is the offspring of an excessive 
fondness for knotty mental problems and sub- 
jects which rather belong to the sphere of the 
metaphysician than that of the poet, and in the 
treatment of which he necessarily discarded the 
example and precept of Milton, who held that 
poetry ought to be " simple, sensous, and passion- 
ate " — or " impassioned," as Coleridge has it — and 
both of these defects infect even the very greatest 
of his productions — "The Cenci " excepted. These 
charges may be brought especially and most em- 
phatically against *the " Prometheus Unbound," 
and yet in despite of all, this must be conceded to 
be one of the most marvellous poems in the 
language ! The conception of this drama, and 
more especially of the characters of the hero, and 
of Asia, and Panthea, are worthy of Milton, though 
the execution in detail and throughout is not equal 
to what we would have expected in a similar work 
from the hand of that mighty master. If not as a 
whole, however, yet in long passages, even in the 
dialogue, he equals the best poets when at their 



PRE FA TOR Y NO TICE. 2 1 

best ; while in his choral strains he rises far above 
what any poet had ever in a similar way attempted 
before. A yet higher encomium by many of our 
ablest critics is pronounced upon " The Cenci." 
Many declare it to be the best drama we have had 
since the Elizabethan era, and some even regard it 
quite as a Shakespearean one. It is a great 
drama, but it is not Shakespearean Shelley found 
in the magic mirror of his imagination, indeed, the 
various characters reflected in his verse ; yet if 
these were not meiely reflections of himself they 
were all too much coloured by his own feelings to 
be Shakespearean. The Prince of Dramatists 
undoubtedly, like all other poets, must have incor- 
porated much of his own personality into his 
creations, since, as Blake has it, " It is impossible 
to thought a greater than itself to know ; " but his 
genius was too supreme to allow this to be seen — 
or be traceable ! With Shelley, as with Milton, 
the case was otherwise. " In the 'Paradise Lost,' " 
says Coleridge, " indeed, in every one of his poems, 
it is Milton himself whom you see : his Satan, his 
Raphael, almost his Eve, are all John Milton." 
And in a similar way, may be said, that nearly all 
Shelley's characters are in some measure a re- 
production of himself. Set aside the consideration 
of sex, even the charming Beatrice t in " The 



2 2 PRE FA TOR Y NO TICE. 

Cenci," is so. That great poem may be none the 
worse on that account — only it is not Shakespearean. 
Shakespeare is often spoken of as being "many- 
sided." He would be better represented, however, 
by a circle than a polygon, everything touched by 
which is touched at a point equi-distant from the 
centre ; but not so would be such a genius as 
Shelley or Milton, though both of these rare poets 
were also, though in a less degree, many-sided, 
and each in his way gives us a series of characters 
tender and beautiful, lofty and sublime. Many of 
these are painted to the life. Those of "The 
Cenci" are especially so, and the story of that 
drama is well told. " In all probability," as Mr. 
Devey observes in his magnificent essay upon 
Shelley, " in Shakespeare's hands the plot of ' The 
Cenci ' would have assumed a wider basis. The 
facetious element would have been introduced in 
which Shelley was wofully deficient ; " but when 
he, nevertheless, adds that " he hardly thinks the 
story would have been better told," I fail to see the 
logic of his conclusions. In Shakespeare's hands 
the story would have been differently told, though 
whether more effectively is another question ; but 
surely had he felt the necessity of introducing the 
" facetious element " (and I presume he would not 
have introduced it without feeling that necessity), 



PRE FA TOR Y NO TICE. 23 

the story would most surely have been better for 
its introduction. But the work as Shelley has 
given it is a master-piece, and few can read it 
without wishing that he had given us many such. 
And had he lived longer it is just possible that he 
might have done so, and yet is it likely that he 
would ? One must admit that this is questionable. 
Of this one thing we are certain, no sooner had he 
put the finishing touch to " The Cenci," than he 
set about writing another poem — " The Witch of 
Atlas " — in which he returns to the purely ideal 
with all the rapture with which an eagle that has 
escaped from a trap might be supposed to return 
to his aery in the regions of the sun. The effect of 
this upon his noble-minded wife, who was one 
of his best critics, was such as to draw from her an 
animadversion, and to which in turn he playfully 
replied with the verses commencing : — 

** How, my dear Mary, are you critic-bitten 

(For vipers kill, though dead) by some review, 

That you condemn these verses I have written, 
Because they tell no story, false or true ? 

What though no mice are caught by a young kitten, 
May it not leap and play as grown cats do, 

Till its claws come ? Prithee, for this one time 

Content thee with a visionary rhyme." 

But Mary evidently thought that the kitten had 



PRE FA TOR Y NO TICE. 



already had sufficient play — that it was all blarney 
about its claws not being grown, vince it had just, 
at least, caught one very large mouse ; or, to be 
more serious, that she and the world had already 
had too many visionary rhymes, and that this was 
the more to be lamented, since the mighty genius 
who had penned these rhymes had already dis- 
played a capacity for the tragic drama such as had 
not been witnessed for ages. Regrets like these, 
though natural enough on his noble-minded wife's 
part, are, however, futile. Shelley, who at this 
very period, through causes before alluded to, was 
passing through the fiery furnace of regret and 
remorse, knew best what to him, for the time being, 
was his natural and best element ; and when we 
reflect on what he achieved while in that element, 
we are awe-struck, abashed, and ashamed at our 
having been guilty of anything like fault-finding. 
We must take the great poet for what he was, not 
for what we in our blindness and weakness would 
wish him to have been, and in his own sphere he 
was a demi-god, and without a peer. " Out of the 
most indefinite terms of a hard, cold, dark, meta- 
physical system," says Macaulay, "he made a 
gorgeous Pantheon full of beautiful, majestic, and 
life-like forms. He turned Atheism itself into a 
mythology rich with visions as glorious as the gods 



PRE FA TOR Y NO TICE. 2 5 

that live in the marble of Phidias, or the virgin 
saints that smile on us from the canvas of Murillo." 
This being so, what more can we desire ? What, 
indeed ? Are we to find fault with the tree because, 
while it has yielded us a rich stock of grapes, it has 
not yielded us a rich stock of apples also ? Grapes, 
however, are not, as we have seen, the truest 
symbols of Shelley's poems, although they all have 
a fair share of sweetness, and a few of the shorter 
pieces are laden with it. Subtlety of thought, 
gorgeousness of imagery — the magnificent or the 
sublime, linked to the most charming music, are 
the characteristics of his best work, and that best 
means the full half of his multitudinous and multi- 
farious poems. Such are the dominant qualities of 
much of the " Revolt of Islam," " Alastor," " The 
Witch of Atlas," "The Adonais" — which poem is 
also steeped in deep spiritual pathos — and the other 
great poems before mentioned. "The Epipsy- 
chidion," the most impassioned of his narrative 
poems, is, indeed, a sort of celestial grape, and 
of such divine virtue, that once having touched our 
lips, we are set dreaming of visions of the most 
enchanting loveliness, and of love which satiates 
not for evermore ! I was about to call this the 
most precious of all Shelley's precious poems, when 
lo, into my imagination comes the vision of The 



26 PRE FA TOR Y NO TICE. 

Sensitive Plant, with its enchanted Garden and its 
Elf-like Lady Attendant, and anon is the question 
suggested, Can anything possibly be more precious 
than that ? Most certainly there is nothing more 
original, and in honied sweetness, ethereal beauty, 
and in delicacy of workmanship and fairy-like 
melody united, I know of nothing to be compared 
with it out of Coleridge. That life-giving power of 
imagination which can only be possessed by the 
true poet, and which enabled him to create out of 
the most abstract terms the most life-like forms, as 
already spoken of, is exemplified in almost every 
verse in this glorious creation. Take as a specimen 
the opening stanza : — 

" A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew, 
And the young winds fed it with silver dew ; 
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light, 
And closed them beneath the kisses of night." 

And again in another way : — 

" For Winter came ; the wind was his whip ; 
One choppy finger was on his Up ; 
He had torn the cataracts from the hills, 
And they clanked at his girdle like manacles." 

That, at least, is a personification of great power, 
and full of life, and yet it is perhaps excelled by his 



PRE FA TOR Y NO TICE. 27 

personification of Time in the "Mask of Anarchy." 
This other picture is painted in the words of a 
" maniac maid," the last survivor of the champions 
of Liberty which had been born to Time, and 
" whose name was Hope, though she looked more 
like Despair." Flying before the hideous revellers 
in the " Mask," she cries 

" My father Time is hoar and grey 
With waiting for a better clay ; 
See how idiot-like he stands, 
Fumbling with his palsied hands ! 

He has had child after child, 
And the dust of death is piled 
Over every one but me — 
Misery— 0, Misery ! " 

A fine subject for an artist that ! but how is an 
artist to paint this % — 

" Revenge and wrong bring forth their kind, 
The foul cubs as their parent are ; 
Their den is in the guilty mind, 
And conscience feeds them with despair." 

This is from "Hellas," a lyrical drama, and a 
sublime song on behalf of Liberty. Shelley was 
always inspired and sublime when he sang of 
Liberty, and in his great odes, those to Naples and 
to Liberty in particular His " Ode to the West 



28 PRE FA TOR Y NO TICE. 

Wind " is also among his greatest things, and yet 
he is, perhaps, nowhere so fascinating as in those 
brief lyrics which come now like wild wails from 
the forest on the wings of the blast, and now like 
sighs on the fitful breeze from the reeds on the 
river brim. Not even " The Question," with its rich 
bouquet of "pied wind-flowers, and violets," of 
"faint oxlips," and "tender blue-bells, at whose 
birth the earth scarce heaved" — of "wild roses" 
and the rest of Flora's sweetest children — not "Ariel 
to Miranda," in which some of the sweetest opera- 
tions of the Soul of the Universe are conjured up 
in the imagination in a strain as purely spiritual, 
and to deep-souled sage, or to deep-hearted maiden 
and youth, as delicious as ever flowed from the lips 
of that "quaint spirit," the "delicate Ariel" of the 
"still-vexed Bermoothes" himself — not in "The 
Cloud," that "gossamer-spun web" of the most 
brilliant, airy, fantastic, and most delightful fancies 
— nay, not in "The Skylark," that strain which 
wells up from the depths of the poet's heart like a 
pellucid fount whose waters bubble, and flash, and 
sparkle in the light of the noonday sun, is there a 
spell so subtle or powerful as that which lurks in 
the feeling, the sentiment, and the melody of 
some of his briefest and tiniest lyrics. Read the 
pieces beginning with the lines, "That time is 



PRE FA TOR V NO TICE. 29 

dead for ever, child," " When passion's trance is 
overpast," " The keen stars were twinkling," " I 
arise from dreams of thee," " He came like a 
dream in the dawn of life," "The warm sun is 
failing," " My faint spirit was sitting in the light," 
" From the rivers and highlands," " Away ! the 
moor is dark beneath the moon " — read any of 
the songs beginning with these lines — and many 
others nearly as fine could be added to the list — and 
you read what goes direct to the heart and remains 
there. I have repeatedly alluded to the rarity of 
Shelley's music. Each of the above-named 
pieces has a melody of its own, and that melody 
in each case is a perfect reflex in sound of the 
feeling and sentiment which lies at the root of 
the lyric. Not so much as a metrical harmonist, 
however, as a metrical melodist, as Mr. Devey 
finely suggests, doth Shelley's rare excellence as a 
singer rest. In metrical harmonies he has been 
equalled and surpassed, but in pure melody — when 
we consider the number, the originality, the vast 
variety and utter perfection of his word-tunes, we 
are forced to place him at the head of all the verse- 
melodists who have left any specimens of their gift 
on record. Shelley is, in verity, the king of verse 
melodists. That title at least must be conceded to 
him, though in sheer quality of melody and other 



3 o PRE FA TOR Y NO TICE. 

essentials of lyric song he has been at least 
equalled, if not excelled, by Shakespeare. Shelley, 
to whom the lyric was a channel through which he 
would pour out his own richest and most precious 
personal feelings, has indeed left a number of 
pieces characterised by a beauty of sentiment 
which is only equalled by two or three of the tiny 
songlets of Shakespeare, to whom, on the other 
hand, the lyric was merely the medium through 
which he would utter the supposed feeling or fancy 
of the moment of others — but against this must be 
set an airiness and spontaneity of utterance in all 
cases unmatched even by Shelley — while the 
wonderful dramatic propriety of expression dis- 
played in those utterances is in itself a quality of 
the highest and most supreme value in song — and 
one too, by the way, to which Shelley can lay little or 
no claim. Indeed, in this latter quality I know of no 
poet who has made the least approach to Shakes- 
peare, except Burns, and that poet too is also notable 
for his spontaneity, airiness, and melody ; though 
in the second and last respect he is far below 
Shelley, as in spontaniety and all other song- 
essentials he is below Shakespeare ; and so on the 
score of sheer quality alone must be put aside in a 
consideration as to whom shall be assigned the 
highest honour in lyric song. But if, on the other 



PREFA TOR Y NOTICE. 31 

hand, fertility of faculty and quantity of lyric pro- 
duct, and that product comprising as it does a 
series of pictures typical of a vaster number of the 
various phases of human passion and character 
than is to be found in any other songsters be con- 
sidered — and many eminent critics appear to think 
that these ought on such an occasion to be con- 
sidered — then it would be a question if Burns had 
not as just a claim as either Shelley or Shakespeare 
themselves to the contested laurel. This is a ques- 
tion on which critics, in all likelihood, will at all 
times differ, and on which the mass of readers will 
exercise their own judgment, whatever critics may 
think ; but of this we may rest assured, whatever the 
prevailing opinion as to the relative position as 
lyrists these bards ought to occupy, that just as the 
intrinsic value of their songs will remain untouched 
by such opinion, so just will that intrinsic value 
cause these songs through all time to be cherished 
as among the brightest, the purest, the richest, the 
rarest, and if in size the smallest, in quality the 
most precious of all the precious jewels that sparkle 
in the crown of British song. Then to think of 
some of the larger jewels that were placed in that 
crown by the same three bards ! Of the addresses 
to "The Mouse," to "The Deil," "The Mare 
Maggie," and the " Tarn O'Shanter " of the one ; 



3^ 



PRE FA TOR Y NO TICK. 



the " Epipsychidion," the " Prometheus," the 
"Julian and Maddalo," and the "Cenci" of the 
other ; the " Tempest," the " Macbeth," the 
"Romeo and Juliet," and of "Hamlet" and 
many more of the highest value of the third ! 
and then, as a compliment to our national vanity 
to think that all these three, among others, were 
of British blood ! But I must conclude, and shall 
only add that the lyrics, the lesser poems, and the 
more perfect of the narrative poems of Shelley are 
contained in our present volume, and that it is in 
view on some fitting future occasion to also issue 
the dramas in the same series. 

• JOSEPH SKIPSEY. 




©beliefs poetical XKHorfts. 



ALASTOR ; OR, THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. 



PREFACE. 

The poem entitled Alastor may be considered as allegorical 
of one of the most interesting situations of the human mind. 
It represents a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous 
genius, led forth, by an imagination inflamed and purified 
through familiarity with all that is excellent and majestic, to 
the contemplation of the universe. He drinks deep of the 
fountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. The magnificence 
and beauty of the external world sinks profoundly into the 
frame of his conceptions, and affords to their modifications a 
variety not to be exhausted. So long as it is possible for his 
desires to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, 
he is joyous and tranquil and self-possessed. But the period 
arrives when these objects cease to suffice. His mind is at 
length suddenly awakened, and thirsts for intercourse with an 
intelligence similar to itself. He images to himself the Being 
whom he loves. Conversant with speculations of the sublimest 
and most perfect natures, the vision in which he embodies his 
own imaginations unites all of wonderful or wise or beautiful 
which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover, could depicture. 
The intellectual faculties, the imagination, the functions of 
sense, have their respective requisitions on the sympathy of 
corresponding powers in other human beings. The Poet is 



34 ALASTOR. 



represented as uniting these requisitions and attaching them 
to a single image. He seeks in vain for a prototype of his con- 
ception. Blasted by his disappointment, he descends to an 
untimely grave. 

The picture is not barren of instruction to actual men. The 
Poet's self-centred seclusion was avenged by the Furies of an 
irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin. But that 
power which strikes the luminaries of the world with sudden 
darkness and extinction, by awakening them to too exquisite a 
perception of its influences, dooms to a slow and poisonous decay 
those meaner spirits that dare to abjure its dominion. Their 
destiny is more abject and inglorious, as their delinquency is 
more contemptible and pernicious. They who, deluded by no 
generous error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful 
knowledge, duped by no illustrious superstition, loving nothing 
on this earth, and cherishing no hopes beyond, yet keep aloof 
from sympathies with their kind, rejoicing neither in human 
joy nor mourning with human grief ; these, and such as they, 
have their apportioned curse. They languish, because none feel 
with them their common nature. They are morally dead. 
They are neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of 
the world, nor benefactors of their country. Among those who 
attempt to exist without human sympathy, the pure and tender- 
hearted perish, through the intensity and passion of their search 
after its communities when the vacancy of their spirit suddenly 
makes itself felt. All else, selfish, blind, and torpid, are those 
unforseeing multitudes who constitute, together with their own, 
the lasting misery and loneliness of the world. Those who hive 
not their fellow-beings live unfruitful lives, and prepare for 
their old age a miserable grave. 



EARTH, Ocean, Air, beloved brotherhood \ 
If our great Mother has imbued my soul 
With aught of natural piety to feel 
Your love, and recompense the boon with mine ; 
If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even, 
With sunset and its gorgeous ministers, 
And solemn midnight's tingling silentness ; 



ALASTOR. 35 



If Autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood, 
And Winter robing with pure snow and crowns 
Of starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs — 
If Springs voluptuous pantings when she breathes 
Her first sweet kisses — have been dear to me ; 
If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast, 
I consciously have injured, but still loved 
And cherished these my kindred — then forgive 
This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw 
No portion of your wonted favour now ! 

Mother of this unfathomable world, 

Favour my solemn song ! for I have loved 

Thee ever, and thee only ; I have watched 

Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps, 

And my heart ever gazes on the depth 

Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed 

In charnels and on coffins, where black Death 

Keeps record of the trophies won from thee ; 

Hoping to still these obstinate questionings 

Of thee and thine by forcing some lone ghost, 

Thy messenger, to render up the tale 

Of what we are. In lone and silent hours, 

"When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness, 

Like an inspired and desperate alchemist 

Staking his very life on some dark hope, 

Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks 

"With my most innocent love ; until strange tears, 

Uniting with those breathless kisses, made 

Such magic as compels the charmed night 

To render up thy charge. And, though ne'er yet 

Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary, 

Enough from incommunicable dream, 

And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday thought, 



36 ALAS TOR. 



Has shone within me, that serenely now 

And moveless (as a long forgotten lyre 

Suspended in the solitary dome 

Of some mysterious and deserted fane) 

I wait thy breath, Great Parent ; that my strain 

May modulate with murmurs of the air, 

And motions of the forests and the sea, 

And voice of living beings, and woven hymns 

Of night and day, and the deep heart of man. 

There was a Poet whose untimely tomb 
No human hand with pious reverence reared. 
But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds 
Built o'er his mouldering bones a pjTamid 
Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness. 
A lovely youth, no mourning maiden decked 
With weeping flowers or votive cypress wreath 
The lone couch of his everlasting sleep : 
Gentle, and brave, and generous, no lorn bard 
Breathed o'er his dark fate one melodious sigh : 
He lived, he died, he sang, in solitude. 
Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes 
And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined 
And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes. 
The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn, 
And silence, too enamoured of that voice, 
Locks its mute music in her rugged cell. 

By solemn vision and bright silver dream 

His infancy was nurtured. Every sight 

And sound from the vast earth and ambient air 

Sent to his heart its choicest impulses. 

The fountains of divine philosophy 

Fled not his thirsting lips : and all of great 



ALASTOR. 37 



Or good or lovely which the sacred past 

In truth or fable consecrates he felt 

And knew. When early youth had passed, he left 

His cold fireside and alienated home, 

To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. 

Many a wild waste and tangled wilderness 

Has lured his fearless steps ; and he has bought 

With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men, 

His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps 

He like her shadow has pursued, where'er 

The red volcano over-canopies 

Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice 

With burning smoke ; or where bitumen lakes 

On black bare pointed islets ever beat 

With sluggish surge ; or where the secret caves, 

Rugged and dark, winding among the springs 

Of fire and poison inaccessible 

To avarice or pride, their starry domes 

Of diamond and of gold expand above 

Numberless and immeasurable halls, 

Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines 

Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite. 

Nor had that scene of ampler majesty 

Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven 

And the green earth, lost in his heart its claims 

To love and wonder. He would linger long 

In lonesome vales, making the wild his home ; 

Until the doves and squirrels would partake 

From his innocuous hand his bloodless food, 

Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks — 

And the wild antelope, that starts whene v er 

The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend 

Her timid steps, to gaze upon a form 

More graceful than her own. 



38 ALASTOR. 

His wandering step, 
Obedient to high thoughts, has visited 
The awful ruins of the days of old : 
Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste 
Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers 
Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids, 
Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange, 
Sculptured on alabaster obelisk, 
Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphinx, 
Dark Ethopia in her desert hills 
Conceals. Among the ruined temples there, 
Stupendous columns, and wild images 
Of more than man, where marble daemons watch 
The zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men 
Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around, 
He lingered, poring on memorials 
Of the world's youth ; through the long burning day. 
Gazed on those speechless shapes ; nor, when the moon 
Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades, 
Suspended he that task, but ever gazed 
And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind 
Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw 
The thrilling secrets of the birth of time. 

Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food, 

Her daily portion, from her father's tent, 

And spread her matting for his couch, and stole 

From duties and repose to tend his steps : 

Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe 

To speak her love — and watched his nightly sleep, 

Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips 

Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath 

Of innocent dreams arose. Then, when red morn 

Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home, 

Wildered, and wan, and panting, she returned. 



ALASTOR. 39 



The Poet, wandering on, th rough Arabie, 

And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste, 

And o'er the aerial mountains which pour down 

Indus and Oxus from their icy caves, 

In joy and exultation held his way ; 

Till in the vale of Cachmire, far within 

Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine 

Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower, 

Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched 

His languid limbs, A vision on his sleep 

There came, a dream of hopes that never yet 

Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiled maid 

Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones. 

Her voice was like the voice of his own soul 

Heard in the calm of thought ; its music long, 

Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held 

His inmost sense suspended in its web 

Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues. 

Knowledge, and truth, and virtue were her theme, 

And lofty hopes of divine liberty, 

Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy, 

Himself a poet. Soon the solemn mood 

Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame 

A permeating fire. Wild numbers then 

She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs 

Subdued by its own pathos : her fair hands 

"Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp 

Strange symphony, and in their branching veins 

The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale. 

The beating of her heart was heard to fill 

The pauses of her music, and her breath 

Tumultuously accorded with those fits 

Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose, 

As if her heart impatiently endured 



4o ALASTOR. 



Its bursting burthen. At the sound he turned, 

And saw, by the warm light of their own life, 

Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil 

Of woven wind ; her outspread arms now bare, 

Her dark locks floating in the breath of night, 

Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips 

Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly. 

His strong heart sank and sickened with excess 

Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs, and quelled 

His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet 

Her panting bosom — she drew back awhile ; 

Then, yielding to the irresistible joy, 

With frantic gesture and short breathless cry 

Folded his frame in her dissolving arms. 

Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night 

Involved and swallowed up the vision ; sleep, 

Like a dark flood suspended in its course, 

Kolled back its impulse on his vacant brain 

Roused by the shock, he started from his trance, 

The cold white light of morning, the blue moon, 

Low in the west, the clear and garish hills, 

The distinct valley and the vacant woods, 

Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fled 

The hues of heaven that canopied his bower 

Of yesternight ? the sounds that soothed his sleep, 

The mystery and the majesty of earth, 

The joy, the exultation ? His wan eyes 

Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly 

As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven. 

The Spirit of sweet Human Love has sent 

A vision to the sleep of him who spurned 

Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues 

Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade ; 



ALASTOR. 41 



He overleaps the bounds. Alas ! alas ! 

"Were limbs, and breath, and being intertwined. 

Thus treacherously ? Lost, lost, -for ever lost 

In the wide pathless desert of dim Sleep, 

That beautiful shape ! Does the dark gate of Death 

Conduct to thy mysterious paradise, 

Sleep ? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds, 

And. pendent mountains seen in the calm lake, 

Lead only to a black and watery depth — 

"While Death's blue vault with loathliest vapours hung, 

Where every shade which the foul grave exhales 

Hides its dead eye from the detested day, 

Conducts, Sleep, to thy delightful realms ? 

This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart : 

The insatiate hope which it awakened stung 

His brain even like despair. 

While daylight held 
The sky, the Poet kept mute conference 
With his still soul. At night the passion came, 
Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream, 
And shook him from his rest, and led him forth 
Into the darkness. — As an eagle, grasped 
In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast 
Burn with the poison, and precipitates, 
Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud, 
Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight 
O'er the wide aery wilderness : thus, driven 
By the bright shadow of that lovely dream, 
Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night, 
Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells, 
Startling with careless step the moonlight snake, 
He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight, 
Shedding the mockery of its vital hues 
Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on 



42 ALASTOR. 



Till vast Aornos, seen from Petra's steep, 

Hung o'er the low horizon like a cloud ; 

Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs 

Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind 

Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on, 

Day after clay, a weary waste of hours, 

Bearing within his life the brooding care 

That ever fed on its decaying flame. 

And now his limbs were lean ; his scattered hair, 

Sered by the autumn of strange suffering, 

Sung dirges in the wind ; his listless hand 

Hung like dead bone within its withered skin ; 

Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone, 

As in a furnace burning secretly 

From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers, 

Who ministered with human charity 

His human wants, beheld with wondering awe 

Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer, 

Encountering on some dizzy precipice 

That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of Wind, 

With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet 

Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused 

In his career. The infant would conceal 

His troubled visage in his mother's robe 

In terror at the glare of those wild eyes, 

To remember their strange light in many a dream 

Of after times. But youthful maidens, taught 

By nature, would interpret half the woe 

That wasted him, would call him with false names 

Brother, and friend, would press his pallid hand 

At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path 

Of his departure from their father's door. 

At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore 



ALASTOR. 43 



He paused, a wide and melancholy waste 

Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged 

His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there, 

Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. 

It rose as he approached, and with strong wings 

Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course 

High over the immeasurable main. 

His eyes pursued its flight — "Thou hast a home, 

Beautiful bird ! thou voyagest to thine home, 

Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck 

With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes 

Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. 

And what am I that I should linger here, 

With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, 

Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned 

To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers 

In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven 

That echoes not my thoughts ?" A gloomy smile 

Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips. 

For Sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly 

Its precious charge ; and silent Death exposed, 

Faithless perhaps as Sleep, a shadowy lure, 

With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms. 

Startled by his own thoughts, he looked around : 
There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight 
Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind. 
A little shallop floating near the shore 
Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze. 
It had been long abandoned, for its sides 
Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints 
Swayed with the undulations of the tide. 
A restless impulse urged him to embark, 
And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste ; 



44 A LAS TOR. 



For well he knew that mighty shadow loves 
The slimy caverns of the populous deep. 

The day was fair and sunny : sea and sky 

Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind 

Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves. 

Following his eager soul, the wanderer 

Leapt in the boat ; he spread his cloak aloft 

On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat, 

And felt the boat speed o'er the tranquil sea 

Like a torn cloud before the hurricane. 

As one that in a silver vision floats 

Obedient to the sweep of odorous winds 

Upon resplendent clouds, so rapidly 

Along the dark and ruffled waters fled 

The straining boat. A whirlwind swept it on, 

With fierce gusts and precipitating force, 

Through the white ridges of the chafed sea. 

The waves arose. Higher and higher still 

Their fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest's 

scourge, 
Like serpents struggling in a vulture's grasp. 
Calm, and rejoicing in the fearful war 
Of wave running on wave, and blast on blast 
Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven 
With dark obliterating course, he sate : 
As if their genii were the ministers 
Appointed to conduct him to the light 
Of those beloved eyes, the Poet sate 
Holding the steady helm. Evening came on ; 
The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues 
High 'mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray 
That canopied his path o'er the waste deep ; 



ALASTOR. 45 



Twilight, ascending slowly from the east, 
Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks 
O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of Day ; 
Night followed, clad with stars. On every side 
More horribly the multitudinous streams 
Of ocean's mountainous waste to mutual war 
Rushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mock 
The calm and spangled sky. The little boat 
Still fled before the storm ; still fled, like foam 
Down the steep cataract of a wintry river ; 
Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave : 
Now leaving far behind the bursting mass, 
That fell, convulsing ocean — safely fled — 
As if that frail and wasted human form 
Had been an elemental god. 

At midnight 
The moon arose : and lo ! the ethereal cliffs 
Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone 
Among the stars like sunlight, and around 
"Whose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves, 
Bursting and eddying irresistibly, 
Rage and resound for ever. — Who shall save ? — 
The boat fled on — the boiling torrent drove — 
The crags closed round with black and jagged arms. 
The shattered mountain overhung the sea ; 
And faster still, beyond all human speed, 
Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave, 
The little boat was driven. A cavern there 
Yawned, and amid its slant and winding depths 
Engulfed, the rushing sea. The boat fled on 
With unrelaxing speed. " Vision and Love ! " 
The Poet cried aloud, ' ' I have beheld 
The path of thy departure. Sleep and Death 
Shall not divide us long. " 



46 ALASTOR. 



The boat pursued 
The windings of the cavern. Daylight shone 
At length upon that gloomy river's flow. 
Now, where the fiercest war among the waves 
Is calm, on the unfathomable stream 
The boat moved slowly. Where the mountain, riven, 
Exposed those black depths to the azure sky, 
Ere yet the flood's enormous volume fell 
Even to the base of Caucasus with sound 
That shook the everlasting rocks, the mass 
Filled with one whirlpool all that ample chasm ; 
Stair above stair the eddying waters rose, 
Circling immeasurably fast, and laved 
With alternating dash the gnarled roots 
Of mighty trees that stretched their giant arms 
In darkness over it. I' the midst was left, 
Reflecting yet distorting every cloud, 
A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm. 
Seized by the sway of the ascending stream, 
With dizzy swiftness, round, and round, and round, 
Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose ; 
Till on the verge of the extremest curve, 
Where through an opening of the rocky bank 
The waters overflow, and a smooth spot 
Of glassy quiet 'mid those battling tides 
Is left, the boat paused shuddering. Shall it sink 
Down the abyss ? shall the reverting stress 
Of that resistless gulf embosom it ? 
Now shall it fall ? — A wandering stream of wind, 
Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded 

sail ; 
And lo ! with gentle motion, between banks 
Of mossy slope, and on a placid stream, 
Beneath a woven grove, it sails ; and, hark 1 



ALASTOR. 47 



The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar 

"With the breeze murmuring in the musical woods. 

"Where the embowering trees recede, and leave 

A little space of green expanse, the cove 

Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowers 

For ever gaze on their own drooping eyes 

Reflected in the crystal calm. The wave 

Of the boat's motion marred their pensive task, 

Which nought but vagrant bird, or wanton wind, 

Or falling spear-grass, or their own decay, 

Had e'er disturbed, before. The Poet longed 

To deck with their bright hues his withered hair ; 

But on his heart its solitude returned, 

And. he forbore. Not the strong impulse hid 

In those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and. shadowy frame, 

Had yet performed its ministry : it hung 

Upon his life, as lightning in a cloud. 

Gleams, hovering ere it vanish, ere the floods 

Of night close over it. 

The noonday sun 
Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass 
Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence 
A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves, 
Scooped in the dark base of those aery rocks, 
Mocking its moans respond and roar for ever. 
The meeting boughs and implicated leaves 
"Wove twilight o'er the Poet's path, as, led 
By love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death, 
He sought in Nature's dearest haunt some bank, 
Her cradle, and his sepulchre. More dark 
And dark the shades accumulate. The oak, 
Expanding its immense and knotty arms, 
Embraces the light beech. The pyramids 
Of the tall cedar, overarching, frame 



48 ALASTOR. 



Most solemn domes within ; and far below, 

Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky, 

The ash and the acacia floating hang, 

Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents clothed 

In rainbow and in fire, the parasites, 

Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around 

The grey trunks ; and, as gamesome infants' eyes, 

With gentle meanings and most innocent wiles, 

Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love, 

These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs, 

Uniting their close union ; the woven leaves 

Make network of the dark-blue light of day 

And the night's noontide clearness, mutable 

As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns 

Beneath these canopies extend their swells, 

Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms 

Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glen 

Sends from its woods of musk-rose twined with jasmine 

A soul-dissolving odour, to invite 

To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell, 

Silence and Twilght here, twin sisters, keep 

Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades 

Like vaporous shapes half-seen. Beyond, a well, 

Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave, 

Images all the woven boughs above, 

And each depending leaf, and every speck 

Of azure sky darting between their chasms ; 

Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves 

Its portraiture, but some inconstant star 

Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair, 

Or painted bird sleeping beneath the moon, 

Or gorgeous insect floating motionless, 

Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings 

Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon. 



ALAS TOR. 49 



Hither the Poet came. His eyes beheld 

Their own wan light through the reflected lines 

Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark depth 

Of that still fountain ; as the human heart, 

Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave, 

Sees its own treacherous likeness there. He heard 

The motion of the leaves ; the grass that sprung 

Startled, and glanced, and trembled, even to feel 

An unaccustomed presence : and the sound 

Of the sweet brook that from the secret springs 

Of that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemed 

To stand beside him — clothed in no bright robes 

Of shadowy silver or enshrining light 

Borrowed from aught the visible world affords 

Of grace, or majesty, or mystery ; 

But — undulating woods, and silent well, 

And rippling rivulet, and evening gloom 

Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming — 

Held commune with him, as if he and it 

Were all that was. Only — when his regard 

Was raised by intense pensiveness — two eyes, 

Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought, 

And seemed with their serene and azure smiles 

To beckon him. 

Obedient to the light 
That shone within his soul, he went, pursuing 
The windings of the dell. The rivulet, 
Wanton and wild, through many a green ravine 
Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fell 
Among the moss, with hollow harmony 
Dark and profound. Now on the polished stones 
It danced : like childhood, laughing as it went : 
Then, through the plain in tranquil wanderings creptj 
Reflecting every herb and drooping bud 



5 o ALASTOR. 



That overhang its quietness. — "0 stream, 

Whose source is inaccessibly profound, 

Whither do thy mysterious waters tend ? 

Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome stillness, 

Thy dazzling waves, thy loud and hollow gulfs, 

Thy searchless fountain and invisible course, 

Have each their type in me. And the wide sky 

And measureless ocean may declare as soon 

What oozy cavern or what wandering cloud 

Contains thy waters as the universe 

Tell where these living thoughts reside, when, 

stretched 
Upon thy flowers, my bloodless limbs shall waste 
I' the passing wind ! " 

Beside the grassy shore 
Of the small stream he went ; he did impress 
On the green moss his tremulous step, that caught 
Strong shuddering from his burning limbs. As one 
Roused by some joyous madness from the couch 
Of fever, he did move ; yet not (like him) 
Forgetful of the grave, where, when the flame 
Of his frail exultation shall be spent, 
He must descend. With rapid steps he went 
Beneath the shade of trees, beside the flow 
Of the wild babbling rivulet ; and now 
The forest's solemn canopies were changed 
For the uniform and lightsome evening sky. 
Grey rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmed 
The struggling brook ; tall spires of windlestrae 
Threw their thin shadows down the ragged slope ; 
And nought but gnarled roots of ancient pines, 
Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots 
The unwilling soil. A gradual change was here, 
Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away, 



ALASTOR. 51 



The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin 
And white, and, where irradiate dewy eyes 
Had shone, gleam stony orbs ; so from his steps 
Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade 
Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds 
And musical motions. Calm he still pursued 
The stream, that with a larger volume now 
Rolled through the labyrinthine dell, and there 
Fretted a path through its descending curves 
With its wintry speed. On every side now rose 
Rocks which in unimaginable forms 
Lifted their black and barren pinnacles 
In the light of evening, and its precipice, 
Obscuring the ravine, disclosed above, 
'Mid toppling stones, black gulfs, and yawning cave; 
Whose windings gave ten thousand various tongues 
To the loud stream. Lo ! where the pass expands 
Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks, 
And seems with its accumulated crags 
To overhang the world : for wide expand, 
Beneath the wan stars and descending moon, 
Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams, 
Dim tracks and vast robed in the lustrous gloom 
Of leaden-coloured even, and fiery hills 
Mingling their flames with twilight on the verge 
Of the remote horizon. The near scene, 
In naked and severe simplicity, 
Made contrast with the universe. A pine, 
Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy 
Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast 
Yielding one only response at each pause, 
In most familiar cadence — with the howl, 
The thunder, and the hiss, of homeless streams, 
Mingling its solemn song ; whilst the broad river, 



52 ALASTOR. 



Foaming and hurrying o'er its rugged path, 
Fell into that immeasurable void, 
Scattering its waters to the passing winds. 

Yet the grey precipice and solemn pine 

And torrent were not all — one silent nook 

Was there. Even on the edge of that vast mountain, 

Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks, 

It overlooked in its serenity 

The dark earth and the bending vault of stars. 

It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile 

Even in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped 

The fissured stones with its entwining arms, 

And did embower, with leaves forever green 

And berries dark, the smooth and even space 

Of its inviolated floor ; and here 

The children of the autumnal whirlwind bore 

In wanton sport those bright leaves whose decay — ■ 

Rod, yellow, or ethereally pale — 

Rivals the pride of summer. 'Tis the haunt 

Of every gentle wind whose breath can teach 

The wilds to love tranquillity. One step, 

One human step alone, has ever broken 

The stillness of its solitude — one voice 

Alone inspired its echoes ; — even that voice 

Which hither came, floating among the winds, 

And led the loveliest among human forms 

To make their wild haunts the depository 

Of all the grace and beauty that endued 

Its motions, render up its majesty, 

Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm, 

And to the damp leaves and blue cavern mould, 

Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss, 

Commit the colours of that varying cheek, 



ALASTOR. 53 



That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes. 
The dim and horned moon hung low, and poured 
A sea of lustre on the horizon's verge 
That overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist 
Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank 
Wan moonlight even to fulness : not a star 
Shone, not a sound was heard ; the very Winds, 
Danger's grim playmates, on that precipice 
Slept, clasped in his embrace. — storm of Death, 
Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night ! 
And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still 
Guiding its irresistible career, 
In thy devastating omnipotence, 
Art king of this frail world ! from the red field 
Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital, 
The patriot's sacred couch, the snowy bed 
Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne, 
A mighty voice invokes thee ! Ruin calls 
His brother Death ! A rare and regal prey 
He hath prepared, prowling around the world ; 
Glutted with which, thou mayst repose, and men 
Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms, 
Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine 
The unheeded tribute of a broken heart. 

When on the threshold of the green recess 

The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew that death 

Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled, 

Did he resign his high and holy soul 

To images of the majestic past, 

That paused within his passive being now, 

Like winds that bear sweet music when they breathe 

Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place 

His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk 



54 ALASTOR. 



Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone 

Reclined his languid head, his limbs did rest, 

Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink 

Of that obscurest chasm — and thus he lay, 

Surrendering to their final impulses 

The hovering powers of life. Hope and despair, 

The torturers, slept : no mortal pain or fear 

Marred his repose ; the influxes of sense, ' . 

And his own being unalloyed by pain, 

Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed 

The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there 

At peace, and faintly smiling. His last sight 

Was the great moon, which o'er the western line 

Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended, 

With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed 

To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills 

It rests ; and still, as the divided frame 

Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood, 

That ever beat in mystic sympathy 

With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still. 

And, when two lessening points of light alone 

Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp 

Of his faint respiration scarce did stir 

The stagnate night — till the minutest ray 

Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart. 

It paused — it fluttered. But, when heaven remained 

Utterly black, the murky shades involved 

An image silent, cold, and motionless, 

As their own voiceless earth and vacant air. 

Even as a vapour, fed with golden beams 

That ministered on sunlight ere the west 

Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame — 

No sense, no motion, no divinity — 

A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings 



ALAS TOR. 55 



The breath of heaven did wander — a bright stream 

Once fed with many-voiced waves (a dream 

Of youth which night and time have quenched for 

ever), 
Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now. 

Oh for Medea's wondrous alchemy, 

Which, wheresoe'er it fell, made the earth gleam 

With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale 

From vernal blooms fresh fragrance ! Oh that God, 

Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice 

Which but one living man has drained, who now, 

Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels 

No proud exemption in the blighting curse 

He bears, over the world wanders for ever, 

Lone as incarnate death ! Oh that the dream 

Of dark magician in his visioned cave, 

Raking the cinders of a crucible 

For life and power even when his feeble hand 

Shakes in its last decay, were the true law 

Of this so lovely world ! — But thou art fled, 

Like some frail exhalation which the dawn 

Kobes in its golden beams — ah ! thou hast fled ! 

The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful, 

The child of grace and genius ! Heartless things 

Are done and said i' the world, and many worms 

And beasts and men live on, and mighty earth, 

From sea and mountain, city and wilderness, 

In vesper low or joyous orison, 

Lifts still its solemn voice : but thou art fled — 

Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes 

Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee 

Been purest ministers, who are, alas ! 

Now thou art not ! Upon those pallid lips, 



56 ALAS TOR. 



So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes 

That image sleep in death, upon that form 

Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear 

Be shed — not even in thought. Nor, when those hues 

Are gone, and those divinest lineaments, 

"Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone 

In the frail pauses of this feeble strain, 

Let not high verse mourning the memory 

Of that which is no more, or painting's woe, 

Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery 

Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence, 

And all the shows o' the world, are frail and vain 

To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade. 

It is a woe " too deep for tears " when all 

Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit, 

Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves 

Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans, 

The passionate tumult of a clinging hope — 

But pale despair and cold tranquillity, 

Nature's vast frame, the web of human things, 

Birth and the grave, that are not as they were. 




EARLY POEMS. 



TO COLERIDGE. 

1. /""\H ! there are spirits in the air, 
V«/ And genii of the evening breeze, 
And gentle ghosts with eyes as fair 

As starbeams among twilight trees — 
Such lovely ministers to meet 
Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely fee: 

2. With mountain winds, and babbling springs. 

And moonlight seas, that are the voice 
Of these inexplicable things, 

Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice 
When they did answer thee. But they 
Cast like a worthless boon thy love away. 

3. And thou hast sought in starry eyes 

Beams that were never meant for thine, 
Another's wealth — tame sacrifice 

To a fond faith ! Still dost thou pine ? 
Still dost thou hope that greeting hands, 
Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands 



58 STANZAS. 



4. Ah ! wherefore didst thou build thine hope 

On the false earth's inconstancy ? 
Did thine own mind afford no scope 

Of love or moving thoughts to thee — 
That natural scenes or human smiles 
Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles ? 

5. Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled 

Whose falsehood left thee broken-hearted ; 
The glory of the moon is dead ; 

Night's ghosts and dreams have now departed : 
Thine own soul still is true to thee, 
But changed to a foul fiend through misery. 

(i This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever 
Beside thee like thy shadow hangs, 
Dream not to chase — the mad endeavour 

Would scourge thee to severer pangs. 
Be as thou art. Thy settled fate, 
Dark as it is, all change would aggravate. 



STANZAS— APRIL 1814. 

AWAY ! the moor is dark beneath the moon, 
Rapid clouds have drunk the last pale beam 
of even : 
Away ! the gathering winds will call the darkness 
soon, 
And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of 
heaven. 



STANZAS. 59 



Pause not ! the time is past ! Every voices cries 

"Away !" 
Tempt not with one last glance thy friend's ungentle 
mood : 
Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat 

thy stay : 
Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude. 

Away, away ! to thy sad and silent home ; 
Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth ; 
"Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go 
and come, 
And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth. 
The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around 
thine head, [thy feet : 

The blooms of dewy Spring shall gleam beneath 
But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost 
that binds the dead, 
Ere midnight's frown and morning's smile, ere thou and 
peace, may meet. 

The cloud shadows of midnight possess their own 

repose, 

For the weary winds are silent, or the moon is in the deep ; 

Some respite to its turbulence unresting ocean knows ; 

Whatever moves or toils or grieves hath its appointed 

sleep. [toms flee 

Thou in the grave shalt rest — yet, till the phan- 

"Which that house and heath and garden made dear 

to thee erewhile, 

Thy remembrance and repentance and deep musings are 

not free 
From the music of two voices, and the light of one 
sweet smile. 



6o MUTABILITY. 



1 W 1 



MUTABILITY. 

'E are as clouds that veil the midnight moon ; 
How restlessly they speed and gleam and 
quiver, 

Streaking the darkness radiantly ! yet soon 
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever : 

Or like forgotten lyres whose dissonant strings 
Give various response to each varying blast, 

To whose frail frame no second motion brings 
One mood or modulation like the last. 

We rest — a dream has power to poison sleep ; 

We rise — one wandering thought pollutes the day ; 
We feel, conceive, or reason,- laugh or weep, 

Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away. 

It is the same ! — For, be it joy or sorrow, 
The path of its departure still is free ; 

Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow ; 
Nought may endure but Mutability. 



ON DEATH. 

There is no work nor device nor knowledge nor wisdom in the 
grave whither thou goest,"— Ecclesiastes. 

THE pale, the cold, and the moony smile 
Which the meteor beam of a starless night 
Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle 
Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light 



ON DEATH. 61 



Is the flame of life so fickle and wan 

That flits round our steps till their strength is gone. 

man ! hold thee on in courage of soul 

Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way ; 

And the billows of cloud that around thee roll 
Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day, 

Where hell and heaven shall leave thee free 

To the universe of destiny. 

This world is the nurse of all we know, 
This world is the mother of all we feel ; 

And the coming of death is a fearful blow 

To a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel, 

When all that we know or feel or see 

Shall pass like an unreal mystery. 

The secret things of the grave are there 
Where all but this frame must surely be, 

Though the fine- wrought eye and the wondrous car 
No longer will live to hear or to see 

All that is great and all that is strange 

In the boundless realm of unending change. 

Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death ? 

Who lifteth the veil of what is to come ? 
Who painteth the shadows that are beneath 

The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb ? 
Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be 
With the fears and the love for that which we see ? 



62 SUMMER-EVENING CHURCHYARD. 



A SUMMER-EVENING CHURCHYARD, LECH- 
LADE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. 

1. ^T^HE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere 

X Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray, 
And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair 
In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day : 
Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men, 
Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen. 

2. They breathe their spells towards the departing day, 

Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea ; 
Light, sound, and motion, own the potent sway, 
Responding to the charm with its own mystery. 
The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass 
Knows not their gentle motions as they pass. 

3. Thou too, aerial pile, whose pinnacles 

Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire, 
Obey'st in silence their sweet solemn spells, 
Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire, 
Around whose lessening and invisible height 
Gather among the stars the clouds of night. 

4. The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres : 

And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound, 
Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs, 
Breathed from their wormy beds all living things 

around ; 
And, mingling with the still night and mute sky, 
Its awful hush is felt inaudibly. 



TO WORDSWORTH. 63 



I, Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild 
And terrorless as the serenest night. 
Here could I hope, like some inquiring child 
Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human 
sight 
Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep 
That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep. 



TO WORDSWORTH. 

POET of Nature, thou hast wept to know 
That things depart which never may return ; 
Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow, 

Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn. 
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine, 

Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore. 
Thou wert as a lone star whose light did shine 

On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar : 
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood 
Above the blind and battling multitude : 
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave 

Songs consecrate to truth and liberty. 
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve, 

Thus, having been, that thou shouldst cease to be. 



64 LINES. 



FEELINGS OF A REPUBLICAN ON THE FALL 
OF BONAPARTE. 

I HATED thee, fallen Tyrant ! I did groan 
To think that a most unambitious slave, 

Like thou, should dance and revel on the grave 
Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne 
Where it had stood even now : thou didst prefer 

A frail and bloody pomp, which Time has swept 
In fragments towards oblivion. Massacre, 

For this, I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept, 
Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust, 

And stifled thee their minister. I know 
Too late, since thou and France are in the dust, 

That Virtue owns a more eternal foe 
Then Force or Fraud ; old Custom, Legal Crime, 
And bloody Faith, the foulest birth of Time. 



LINES. 



1. '""TVHE cold earth slept below ; 

X Above, the cold sky shone ; 
And ail around, 
With a chilling sound, 
From caves of ice and fields of snow 
The breath of night like death did flow 
Beneath the sinking moon. 

2. The wintry hedge was black ; 
The green grass was not seen ; 



LINES. 65 



The birds did rest 

On the bare thorn's breast, 
Whose roots, beside the pathway track, 
Had bound their folds o'er many a crack 
Which the frost had made between. 

3. Thine eyes glowed in the glare 
Of the moon's dying light. 

As a fen-fire's beam 

On a sluggish stream 
Gleams dimly, so the moon shone there ; 
And it yellowed the strings of thy tangled hair, 
That shook in the wind of night. 

4. The moon made thy lips pale, beloved ; 
The wind made thy bosom chill ; 

The night did shed 
On thy dear head 
Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie 
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky 
Might visit thee at will. 

November 1815. 




POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816. 



THE SUNSET. 

THERE late was one within whose subtle being, 
As light and wind within some delicate cloud 
That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky, 
Genius and death contended. None may know 
The sweetness of the joy which made his breath 
Fail like the trances of the summer air, 
When, with the lady of his love, who then 
First knew the unreserve of mingled being, 
He walked along the pathway of a field, 
"Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er, 
But to the west was open to the sky. 
There now the sun had sunk ; but lines of gold 
Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points 
Of the far level grass and nodding flowers, 
And the old dandelion's hoary beard, 
And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay 
On the brown massy woods — and in the east 
The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose 
Between the black trunks of the crowded trees, 
While the faint stars were gathering overhead. — 
" Is it not strange, Isabel," said the youth, 



THE SUNSET. 67 



" I never saw the sun ? We will walk here 
To-morrow ; thou shalt look on it with me." 

That night the youth and lady mingled lay 

In love and sleep — but when the morning came 

The lady found her lover dead and cold. 

Let none believe that God in mercy gave 

That stroke. The lady died not nor grew wild, 

But year by year lived on — in truth I think 

Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles, 

And that she did not die but lived to tend 

Her aged father, were a kind of madness, 

If madness 'tis to be unlike the world. 

For but to see her were to read the tale 

Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts 

Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief — 

Her eyelashes were torn away with tears, 

Her lips and cheeks were like things dead — so pale ; 

Her hands were thin, and through their wandering 

veins 
And weak articulations might be seen 
Day's ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self 
Which one vexed ghost inhabits, night and day, 
Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee ! 

' ' Inheritor of more than earth can give, 
Passionless calm and silence unreproved — 
Whether the dead find — oh ! not sleep — but rest, 
And are the uncomplaining things they seem, 
Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love ; 
Oh ! that, like thine, mine epitaph were — Peace ! " 
This was the only moan she ever made. 

Mshopgate, Spring 1816. 



68 INTELLECTUAL BE A UTY. 



HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. 

1. '"T'VHE awful shadow of some unseen Power 

X Floats, though unseen, among us ; visiting 
This various world with as inconstant wing 
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower. 
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain 
shower, 

It visits with inconstant glance 
Each human heart and countenance ; 
Like hues and harmonies of evening, 
Like clouds in starlight widely spread, 
Like memory of music fled, 
Like aught that for its grace may be 
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery. 

2. Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate 

"With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon 
Of human thought or form, where art thou gone ? 
"Why dost thou pass away, and leave our state, 
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate — 
Ask why the sunlight not for ever 
Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river ; 
"Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown ; 
"Why fear, and dream, and death, and birth 
Cast on the daylight of this earth 
Such gloom ; why man has such a scope 
For love and hate, despondency and hope ! 

3. No voice from some sublimer world hath ever 

To sage or poet these responses given : 
Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven, 
Remain the records of their vain endeavour : 



INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. 69 



Frail spells, whose uttered charm might not avail to 
From all we hear and all we see, [sever, 

Doubt, chance, and mutability. 
Thy light alone, like mist o'er mountains driven, 
Or music by the night-wind sent 
Through strings of some still instrument, 
Or moonlight on a midnight stream, 
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream. 

4. Love, hope, and self-esteem, like clouds depart 
And come for some uncertain moments lent. 
Man were immortal and omnipotent, 
Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, 
Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart. 
Thou messenger of sympathies 
That wax and wane in lovers' eyes ! 
Thou that to human thought art nourishment, 
Like darkness to a dying flame ! 
Depart not as thy shadow came : 
Depart not, lest the grave should be, 
Like life and fear, a dark reality ! 

5. While yet a boy, I sought for ghosts, and sped 

Through many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin, 
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing 
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. 
I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed. 
I was not heard, I saw them not ; 
When musing deeply on the lot 
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing 
All vital things that wake to bring 
News of birds and blossoming, 
Sudden thy shadow fell on me — 
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy J 



7o INTELLECTUAL SEA UTY. 



6. I vowed that I would dedicate my powers 

To thee and thine : have I not kept the vow ? 
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now 
I called the phantoms of a thousands hours 
Each from his voiceless grave. They have in visioned 
bowers 
Of studious zeal or love's delight 
Outwatched with me the envious night : 
They know that never joy illumed my brow, 

Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free 
This world from its dark slavery ; 
That thou, awful Loveliness, 
"Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express. 

7. The day becomes more solemn and serene 

When noon is past ; there is a harmony 
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, 
Which through the summer is not heard nor seen. 
As if it could not be, as if it had not been. 

Thus let thy power, which like the truth 
Of Nature on my passive youth 
Descended, to my onward life supply 
Its calm — to one who worships thee, 
And every form containing thee, 
Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind 
To fear himself, and love all humankind. 



-****§► 



MONT BLANC. 71 

MONT BLANC. 

LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI. 

THE everlasting universe of Things 
Flows through the Mind, and rolls its rapid 
waves, 
Now dark — now glittering — now reflecting 
gloom — 
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs 
The source of human thought its tribute brings 
Of waters — with a sound but half its own, 
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume 
In the wild woods, among the mountains lone, 
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever, 
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river 
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves. 

Thus thou, Kavine of Arve — dark, deep Ravine— 
Thou many-coloured many- voiced vale, 
Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail 
Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams ; awful scene, 
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down 
From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne, 
Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame 
Of lightning through the tempest ; thou dost lie — - 
Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging, 
Children of elder time, in whose devotion 
The chainless winds still come and ever came 

To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging 
To hear, an old and solemn harmony ; 
Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep 
Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil 



72 MONT BLANC. 



Robes some uusculptured image ; the stranga 
sleep 
Which, when the voices of the desert fail, 
"Wraps all in its own deep eternity ; 

Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion, 
A loud lone sound no other sound can tame. 

Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion, 
Thou art the path of that unresting sound, 
Dizzy Ravine ! And, when I gaze on thee, 

I seem, as in a trance sublime and strange, 
To muse on my own separate fantasy, 
My own, my human mind, which passively 
Now renders and receives fast influencings, 
Holding an unremitting interchange 
"With the clear universe of things around ; 

One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings 
Now float above thy darkness, and now rest 
"Where that or thou art no unbidden guest, 
In the still cave of the witch Poesy — 
Seeking, among the shadows that pass by, 
Ghosts of all things that are — some shade of thee, 
Some phantom, some faint image. Till the breast 
From which they fled recalls them, thou art there ! 

Some say that gleams of a remoter world 
Visit the soul in sleep — that death is slumber, 
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber 
Of those who wake and live. I look on high ; 

Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled 
The veil of life and death ? Or do I lie 

In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep 
Spread far around and inaccessibly 
Its circles ? for the very spirit faie, 

Driven like a homeless cloud from step to steep 



MONT BLANC. 73 



That vanishes among the viewless gales ! 
Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky, 
Mont Blanc appears — still, snowy, and serene. 
Its subject mountains their unearthly forms 
Pile around it, ice and rock ; broad vales between 
Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps, 

Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread 
And wind among the accumulated steeps ; 
A desert peopled by the storms alone, 
Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone, 
And the wolf tracks her there. How hideously 
Its shapes are heaped around — rude, bare, and high, 
Ghastly, and scared, and riven ! — Is this the scene 
Where the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young 
Euin ? were these their toys ? or did a sea 
Of fire envelop once this silent snow ? 
None can reply — all seems eternal now. 
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue 

Which teaches awful doubt — or faith so mild, 
So solemn, so serene, that Man may be, 
But for such faith, with Nature reconciled. 
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal 
Large codes of fraud and woe ; not understood 
By all, but which the wise, and great, and good 
Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel. 

The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams, 
Ocean, and all the living things that dwell 
Within the daedal earth, lightning and rain, 
Earthquake and fiery flood and hurricane, 

The torpor of the year when feeble dreams 

Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep 

Holds every future leaf and flower, the bound 

With which from that detested trance they leap, 



74 MONT BLANC. 



The works and ways of man, their death and 
birth, 
And that of him, and all that his may be, 
All things that move and breathe, with toil and 
sound 
Are born and die, revolve, subside, and swell. 
Power dwells apart in its tranquillity, 
Remote, serene, and inaccessible : 

And this the naked countenance of earth 
On which I gaze, even these primaeval mountains, 
Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep, 

Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far 
fountains, 
Slow rolling on ; there, many a precipice 

Frost and the sun in scorn of mortal power 
Have piled— dome, pyramid, and pinnacle, 
A city of death, distinct with many a tower 
And wall impregnable of beaming ice. 
Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin, 
Is there, that from the boundary of the skies 

Rolls its perpetual stream ; vast pines are strewing 
Its destined path, or in the mangled soil 
Branchless and shattered stand ; the rocks, drawn 

down 
From yon remotest waste, have overthrown 
The limits of the dead and living world, 
Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place 
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil ; 
Their food and their retreat for ever gone, 
So much of life and joy is lost. The race 
Of man flies far in dread ; his work and dwelling 
Vanish like smoke before the tempest's stream, 

And their place is not known. Below, vast caves 
Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam, 



MONT BLANC. 75 



Which, from those secret chasms in tumult welling, 
Meet in the Vale ; and one majestic River, 
The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever 

Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves, 
Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air. 

5. Mont Blanc yet gleams on high : the power is there, 
The still and solemn power, of many sights 

And many sounds, and much of life and death . 
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights, 
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend 
Upon that Mountain ; none beholds them there, 
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun, 
Or the star- beams dart through them. Winds 
contend 
Silently there, and heap the snow, with breath 
Rapid and strong, but silently. Its home 
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes 
Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods 
Over the snow. The secret Strength of Things, 
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome 
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee. 
And what were thou and earth and stars and sea, 

If to the human mind's imaginings 
Silence and solitude were vacancy ? 

23rd June 1816. 




JULIAN AND MADDALO. 

A CONVERSATION. 

Count Maddalo is a Venetian nobleman of ancient family 
and of great fortune, who, without mixing much in the society 
of his countrymen, resides chiefly at his magnificent palace in 
that city. He is a person of the most consummate genius, and 
capable, if he would direct his energies to such an end, of 
becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. But it is his 
weakness to be proud : he derives, from a comparison of his 
own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that sur- 
round him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human 
life. His passions and his powers are incomparably greater 
than those of other men ; and, instead of the latter having been 
employed in curbing the former, they have mutually lent each 
other strength. His ambition preys upon itself, for want of 
objects which it can consider worthy of exertion. I say that 
Maddalo is proud, because I can find no other word to express 
the concentrated and impatient feelings which consume him ; 
but it is on his own hopes and affections only that he seems to 
trample, for in social life no human being can be more gentle, 
patient, and unassuming than Maddalo. He is cheerful, frank, 
and witty. His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxi- 
cation: men are held by it as by a spell. He has travelled 
much, and there is an inexpressible charm in his relation of his 
adventures in different countries. 

Julian is an Englishman of good family ; passionately attached 
to those philosophical notions which assert the power of man 
over his own mind, and the immense improvements of which, 
by the extinction of certain moral superstitions, human society 
may yet be susceptible. Without concealing the evil in the 
world, he is for ever speculating how good may be made 
superior. He is a complete infidel, and a scoffer at all things 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 77 



reputed holy ; and Maddalo takes a wicked pleasure in drawing 
out his taunts against religion. What Maddalo thinks on these 
matters is not exactly known. Julian, in spite of his heterodox 
opinions, is conjectured by his friends to possess some good 
qualities. How far this is possible the pious reader will deter- 
mine. Julian is rather serious. 

Of the Maniac I can give no information. He seems, by his 
own account, to have been disappointed in love. He was 
evidently a very cultivated and amiable person when in his 
right senses. His story, told at length, might be like many 
other stories of the same kind : the unconnected exclamations 
of his agony will perhaps be found a sufficient comment for the 
text of every heart. 



" The meadows with fresh streams, the bees with thyme, 
The goats with the green leaves of budding Spring, 
Are saturated not— nor Love with tears." — Virgil's Gallus. 



IEODE one evening with Count Maddalo 
Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow 
Of Adria towards Venice. A bare strand 
Of hillocks heaped from ever-shifting sand, 
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds 
Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds, 
Is this ; an uninhabited sea-side, 
Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried, 
Abandons. And no other object breaks 
The waste, but one dwarf tree, and some few stakes 
Broken and unrepaired ; and the tide makes 
A narrow space of level sand thereon, 
Where 'twas our wont to ride while day went down. 
This ride was my delight. I love all waste 
And solitary places ; where we taste 
The pleasure of believing what we see 
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be : 
And such was this wide ocean, and this shore 
More barren than its billows. And, yet more 



78 JULIAN AND MADDALO. 



Than all, with a remembered friend I love 
To ride as then I rode — for the winds drove 
The living spray along the snnny air 
Into our faces ; the blue hea'vens were bare, 
Stripped to their depths by the awakening north ; 
And from the waves sound like delight broke forth, 
Harmonising with solitude, and sent 
Into our hearts aerial merriment. 

So, as we rode, we talked ; and the swift thought, 

Winging itself with laughter, lingered not, 

But flew from brain to brain. Such glee was ours, 

Charged with light memories of remembered hours, 

None slow enough for sadness ; till we came 

Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame. 

This day had been cheerful, but cold ; and now 

The sun was sinking, and the wind also. 

Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be 

Talk interrupted with such raillery 

As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn 

The thoughts it would extinguish — 'twas forlorn, 

Yet pleasing ; such as once, so poets tell, 

The devils held within the vales of hell, 

Concerning God, freewill, and destiny. 

Of all that Earth has been, or yet may be ; 

All that vain men imagine or believe, 

Or hope can paint, or suffering can achieve, 

"We descanted ; and I (for ever still 

Is it not wise to make the best of ill ?) 

Argued against despondency ; but pride 

Made my companion take the darker side. 

The sense that he was greater than his kind 

Had struck, methink, his eagle spirit blind 

By gazing on its own exceeding light. 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 79 



Meanwhile the sun paused ere it should alight 

Over the horizon of the mountains. Oh ! 

How beautiful is sunset, when the glow 

Of heaven descends upon a land like thee, 

Thou paradise of exiles, Italy, 

Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers 

Of cities they encircle ! It was ours 

To stand on thee, beholding it : and then, 

Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men 

"Were waiting for us with the gondola. 

As those who pause on some delightful way, 

Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood 

Looking upon the evening, and the flood 

Which lay between the city and the shore, 

Paved with the image of the sky. The hoar 

And aery Alps, towards the north, appeared 

Through mist — an heaven-sustaining bulwark reared 

Between the east and west ; and half the sky 

"Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry, 

Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew 

Down the steep west into a wondrous hue 

Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent 

"Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent 

Among the many-folded hills. They were 

Those famous Euganean hills, which bear, 

As seen from Lido through the harbour piles, 

The likeness of a clump of peaked isles. 

And then, as if the earth and sea had been 

Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen 

Those mountains towering, as from waves of flame, 

Around the vaporous sun ; from which there came 

The inmost purple spirit of light, and made 

Their very peaks transparent. 

"Ere it fade," 



8o JULIAN AND MADDALO. 



Said my companion, " I will show you soon 
A better station." 

So, o'er the lagune 
We glided ; and from that funereal bark 
I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark 
How from their many isles, in evening's gleam> 
Its temples and its palaces did seem 
Like fabrics of enchantment piled to heaven. 

I was about to speak, when 

" We are even 
Now at the point I meant," said Maddalo — 
And bade the gondolieri cease to row. 
" Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well 
If you hear not a deep and heavy bell." 

I looked, and saw between us and the sun 

A building on an island, such an one 

As age to age might add, for uses vile — 

A windowless, deformed, and dreary pile ; 

And on the top an open tower, where hung 

A bell which in the radiance swayed and swung — 

We could just hear its hoarse and iron tongue : 

The broad sun sank behind it, and it tolled 

In strong and black relief. 

"What we behold 
Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower," 
Said Maddalo ; ' ' and ever at this hour 
Those who may cross the water hear that bell, 
Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell, 
To vespers." 

"As much skill as need to pray 
In thanks or hope for their dark lot have they 
To their stern maker," I replied. 

" Oho ! 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 81 



You talk as in years past," said Maddalo. 

" Tis strange men change not. You were ever still 

Among Christ's flock a perilous infidel, 

A wolf for the meek lambs. If you can't swim, 

Beware of providence ! " I looked on him, 

But the gay smile had faded from his eye. 

"And such," he cried, " is our mortality ! 

And this must be the emblem and the sign 

Of what should be eternal and divine ; 

And, like that black and dreary bell, the soul, 

Hung in an heaven-illumined tower, must toll 

Our thoughts and our desires to meet below 

Round the rent heart, and pray — as madmen do ; 

For what ? they know not, till the night of death, 

As sunset that strange vision, severeth 

Our memory from itself, and us from all 

"We sought and yet were baffled." 

I recall 
The sense of what he said, although I mar 
The force of his expressions. The broad star 
Of day meanwhile had sunk behind the hill ; 
And the black bell became invisible ; 
And the red tower looked grey ; and, all between, 
The churches, ships, and palaces, were seen 
Huddled in gloom ; into the purple sea 
The orange hues of heaven sunk silently. 
We hardly spoke, and soon the gondola 
Conveyed me to my lodging by the way. 

The following morn was rainy, cold, and dim. 
Ere Maddalo arose, I called on him ; 
And, whilst I waited, with his child I played. 
A lovelier toy sweet Nature never made ; 
A serious, subtle, wild, yet gentle being ; 

* F 



82 JULIAN AND MADDALO. 



Graceful without design, and unforeseeing ; 
With eyes — oh speak not of her eyes ! which seem 
Twin mirrors of Italian heaven, yet gleam 
With such deep meaning as we never see 
But in the human countenance. With me 
She was a special favourite : I had nursed 
Her fine and feeble limbs when she came first 
To this bleak world ; and she yet seemed to know 
On second sight her ancient playfellow, 
Less changed than she was by six months or so. 
For, after her first shyness was worn out, 
We sate there, rolling billiard balls about — 
When the Count entered. 

Salutations passed : 
"The words you spoke last night might well have cast 
A darkness on my spirit. If man be 
The passive thing you say, I should not see 
Much harm in the religions and old saws 
(Though /may never own such leaden laws) 
Which break a teachless nature to the yoke : 
Mine is another faith." Thus much I spoke, 
And, noting he replied not, added — "See 
This lovely child ; blithe, innocent, and free : 
She spends a happy time, with little care : 
While we to such sick thoughts subjected are 
As came on you last night. It is our will 
Which thus enchains us to permitted ill. 
We might be otherwise ; we might be all 
We dream of— happy, high, majestical. 
Where is the beauty, love, and truth, we seek, 
But in our minds ? And, if we were not weak, 
Should we be less in deed than in desire ? " 

"Ay, if we were not weak — and we aspire, 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 83 



How vainly ! to be strong," said Maddalo ; 
" You talk Utopia." 

" It remains to know," 
I then rejoined ; " and those who try may find 
How strong the chains are which our spirit bind 
Brittle perchance as straw. We are assured 
Much may be conquered, much may be endured, 
Of what degrades and crushes us. We know 
That we have power over ourselves to do 
And suffer — what, we know not till we try, 
But something nobler than to live and die. 
So taught the kings of old philosophy 
Who reigned before religion made men blind ; 
And those who suffer with their suffering kind 
Yet feel this faith Religion." 

"My dear friend, 
Said Maddalo, " my judgment will not bend 
To your opinion, though I think you might 
Make such a system refutation-tight, 
As far as words go. I knew one like you, 
Who to this city came some months ago, 
With whom I argued in this sort — and he 
Is now gone mad — and so he answered me, 
Poor fellow ! — But, if you would like to go, 
We'll visit him, and his wild talk will show 
How vain are such aspiring theories." 

" I hope to prove the induction otherwise, 
A.nd that a want of that true theory still 
Which seeks a soul of goodness in things iU, 
Or in himself or others, has thus bowed 
His being. ' There are some by nature proud 
Who, patient in all else, demand but this— 
To love and be beloved with gentleness : 



84 JULIAN AND MADDALO. 



And, being scorned, what wonder if they die 
Some living death ? This is not destiny, 
But man's own wilful ill." 

As this I spoke, 
Servants announced the gondola, and we 
Through the fast-falling rain and high-wrought sea 
Sailed to the island where the Madhouse stands. 
We disembarked. The clap of tortured hands, 
Fierce yells, and howlings, and lamentings keen, 
And laughter where complaint had merrier been, 
Accosted us. We climbed the oozy stairs 
Into an old courtyard. I heard on high 
Then fragments of most touching melody ; 
But, looking up, saw not the singer there. 
Through the black bars, in the tempestuous air, 
I saw, like weeds on a wrecked palace growing, 
Long tangled locks, flung wildly forth and flowing, 
Of those who on a sudden were beguiled 
Into strange silence, and looked forth and smiled, 
Hearing sweet sounds. Then I : 

" Methinks there were 
A cure of these with patience and kind care, 
If music can thus move. But what is he 
Whom we seek here ? " 

" Of his sad history 
I know but this," said Maddalo. " He came 
To Venice a dejected man, and fame 
Said he was wealthy, or he had been so : 
Some thought the loss of fortune wrought him woe. 
But he was ever talking in such sort 
As you do — but more sadly ; he seemed hurt, 
Even as a man with his peculiar wrong, - 
To hear but of the oppression of the strong, 
Or those absurd deceits (I think with you 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 85 



In some respects, you know) which carry through 

The excellent impostors of this earth, 

"When they outface detection. He had worth, 

Poor fellow, but a humourist in his way." 

" Alas ! what drove him mad ? " 

11 I cannot say : 
A lady came with him from France ; and, when 
She left him and returned, lie wandered then 
About yon lonely isles of desert sand, 
Till he grew wild. He had no cash or land 
Remaining. The police had brought him here : 
Some fancy took him, and he would not bear 
Removal. So I fitted up for him 
Those rooms beside the sea, to please his whim ; 
And sent him busts, and books, and urns for flowers, 
"Which had adorned his life in happier hours, 
And instruments of music. You may guess 
A stranger could do little more, or less, 
For one so gentle and unfortunate : 
And those are his sweet strains which charm the weight 
From madmen's chains, and make this hell appear 
A heaven of sacred silence hushed to hear." 

" Nay, this was kind of you — he had no claim, 
As the world says." 

"None but the very same 
Which I on all mankind, were I, as he, 
Fallen to such deep reverse. His melody 
Is interrupted now : we hear the din 
Of madmen, shriek on shriek, again begin, 
Let us now visit him : after this strain, 
He ever communes with himself again, 
And sees and hears not any." 

Having said 



86 JULIAN AND MADDALO. 



These words, we called the keeper, aud he led 

To an apartment opening on the sea. 

There the poor wretch was sitting mournfully 

Near a piano, his pale fingers twined 

One with the other ; and the ooze and wind 

Rushed through an open casement, and did sway 

His hair, and starred it with the brackish spray. 

His head was leaning on a music-book, 

And he was muttering, and his lean limbs shook. 

His lips were pressed against a folded leaf, 

In hue too beautiful for health ; and grief 

Smiled in their motions as they lay apart, 

As one who wrought from his own fervid heart 

The eloquence of passion. Soon he raised 

His sad meek face, and eyes lustrous and glazed, 

And spoke — sometimes as one who wrote, and thought 

His words might move some heart that heeded not, 

If sent to distant lands ; and then as one 

Reproaching deeds never to be undone, 

With wondering self-compassion. Then his speech 

Was lost in grief, and then his words came each 

Unmodulated and expressionless — 

But that from one jarred accent you might guess 

It was despair made them so uniform. 

And all the while the loud and gusty storm 

Hissed through the window ; and we stood behind, 

Stealing his accents from the envious wind, 

Unseen. I yet remember what he said 

Distinctly, such impression his words made. 

" Month after month," he cried, " to bear this load ! 
And, as a jade urged by the whip and goad, 
To drag life on — which like a heavy chain 
Lengthens behind with many a link of pain ! 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 87 



And not to speak my grief — Oh not to dare 
To give a human voice to my despair ! 
But live, and move, and, wretched thing ! smile on, 
As if I never went aside to groan — 
A ad wear this mask of falsehood even to those 
Who are most dear ; not for my own repose — 
Alas ! no scorn or pain or hate could be 
So heavy as that falsehood is to me — 
But that I cannot bear more altered faces 
Than needs must be, more changed and cold em- 
braces, 
More misery, disappointment, and mistrust, 
To own me for their father. "Would the dust 
Were covered in upon my body now — 
That the life ceased to toil within my brow ! 
And then these thoughts would at the last be fled : 
Let us not fear such pain can vex the dead. 

" What power delights to torture us ? I know 

That to myself I do not wholly owe 

What now I suffer, though in part I may. 

Alas ! none strewed fresh flowers upon the way 

Where, wandering heedlessly, I met pale Pain, 

My shadow, which will leave me not again. 

If I have erred, there was no joy in error, 

But pain, and insult, and unrest, and terror. 

I have not, as some do, bought penitence 

With pleasure and a dark yet sweet offence ; 

For then, if love and tenderness and truth 

Had overlived hope's momentary youth, 

My creed should have, redeemed me from repenting. 

But loathed scorn and outrage unrelenting 

Met love, excited by far other seeming, 

Until the end was gained : as one from dreaming 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 



Of sweetest peace, I woke, and found my state 
Such as it is ! — 

" thou, my spirit's mate ! 
"Who, for thou art compassionate and wise, 
Wouldst pity me from thy most gentle eyes 
If this sad writing thou shouldst ever see, 
My secret groans must be unheard by thee ; 
Thou wouldst weep tears bitter as blood, to know 
Thy lost friend's incommunicable woe. 
Ye few by whom my nature has been weighed 
In friendship, let me not that name degrade 
By placing on your hearts the secret load 
Which crushes mine to dust. There is one road 
To peace — and that is truth, which follow ye : 
Love sometimes leads astray to misery. 
Yet think not, though subdued (and I may well 
Say that I am subdued), that the full hell 
Within me would infect the untainted breast 
Of sacred nature with its own unrest ; 
As some perverted beings think to find 
In scorn or hate a medicine for the mind 
Which scorn or hate hath wounded — oh how vain ! 
The dagger heals not, but may rend again. 
Believe that I am ever still the same 
In creed as in resolve ; and what may tame 
My heart must leave the understanding free, 
Or all would sink under this agony. 
Nor dream that I will join the vulgar lie, 
Or with my silence sanction tyranny ; 
Or seek a moment's shelter from my pain 
In any madness which the worjd calls gain, 
Ambition, or revenge, or thoughts as stern 
As those which make me what I am ; or turn 
To avarice or misanthropy or lust. 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 89 



Heap on me soon, grave, thy welcome dust ! 
Till then the dungeon may demand its prey ; 
And Poverty and Shame may meet and say, 
Halting beside me in the public way, 
' That love- devoted youth is ours : let's sit 
Beside him : he may live some six months yet.' 
Or the red scaffold, as our country bends, 
May ask some willing victim ; or ye, friends, 
May fall under some sorrow, which this heart 
Or hand may share, or vanquish, or avert. 
I am prepared — in truth, with no proud joy — 
To do or suffer aught ; as when, a boy, 
I did devote to justice and to love 
My nature, worthless now. 

" I must remove 
A veil from my pent mind. 'Tis torn aside ! 
Oh, pallid as Death's dedicated bride, 
Thou mockery which art sitting by my side, 
Am I not wan like thee ? At the grave's call 
I haste, invited to thy wedding-ball, 
To meet the ghastly paramour for whom 
Thou hast deserted me, and made the tomb 
Thy bridal bed. But I beside thy feet 
"Will lie, and watch ye from my winding-sheet 
Thus — wide awake, though dead. — Yet stay, oh, stay 
Go not so soon ! — I know not what I say — 
Hear but my reasons ! — I am mad, I fear, 
My fancy is o'erwrought. — Thou art not here ; 

Pale art thou, 'tis most true But thou art gone — 

Thy work is finished ; I am left alone. 

" Nay, was it I who wooed thee to this breast, 
"Which like a serpent thou envenomest 
As in repayment of the warmth it lent ? 



9o JULIAN AND MADDALO. 



Didst thou not seek me for thine own content ? 

Did not thy love awaken mine ? I thought 

That thou wert she who said, 'You kiss me not 

Ever ; I fear you do not love me now.' 

In truth I loved even to my overthrow 

Her who would fain forget these words — but they 

Cling to her mind, and cannot pass away. 

" You say that I am proud ; that, when I speak, 

My lip is tortured with the wrongs which break 

The spirit it expresses. — Never one 

Humbled himself before as I have done. 

Even the instinctive worm on which we tread 

Turns, though it wound not — then with prostrate head 

Sinks in the dust, and writhes like me — and dies : 

No, wears a living death of agonies. 

As the slow shadows of the pointed grass 
Mark the eternal periods, its pangs pass, 
Slow, ever-moving, making moments be 
As mine seem — each an immortality ! 

" That you had never seen me ! never heard 

My voice ! and more than all had ne'er endured 

The deep pollution of my loathed embrace ! 

That your eyes ne'er had lied love in my face ! 

That, like some maniac monk, I had torn out 

The nerves of manhood by their bleeding root 

With mine own quivering fingers, so that ne'er 

Our hearts had for a moment mingled there, 

To disunite in horror ! These were not, 

With thee, like some suppressed and hideous thought, 

Which flits athwart our musings, but can find 

No rest within a pure and gentle mind : 

Thou sealedst them with many a bare broad word, 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 91 



And searedst my memory o'er them — for I heard, 

And can forget not — they were ministered 

One after one, those curses. Mix them up 

Like self-destroying poisons, in one cup ; 

And they will make one blessing which thou ne'er 

Didst imprecate, for on me death ! 

"It were 
A cruel punishment for one most cruel, 
If such can love, to make that love the fuel 
Of the mind's hell — hate, scorn, remorse, despair. 
But me, whose heart a stranger's tear might wear 
As water-drops the sandy fountain -stone ; 
Who loved and pitied all things, and could moan 
For woes which others hear not, and could see 
The absent with a glass of fantasy, 
And near the poor and trampled sit and weep, 
Following the captive to his dungeon deep ; 
Me, who am as a nerve o'er which do creep 
The else-unfelt oppressions of this earth, 
And was to thee the flame upon thy hearth 
When all beside was cold — that thou on me 
Shouldst rain the plagues of blistering agony ! 
Such curses are, from lips once eloquent 
With love's too partial praise. Let none relent 
Who intend deeds too dreadful for a name, 
Henceforth, if an example of the same 
They seek — for thou on me lookedst so and so, 
And didst speak thus and thus ! I live to show 
How much men bear, and die not. 

" Thou wilt tell. 
With the grimace of hate, how horrible 
It was to meet my love when thine grew less ; 
Thou wilt admire how I could e'er address 
Such features to love's work. This taunt, though true, 



92 JULIAN AND MADDALO. 



(For indeed Nature nor in form nor hue 

Bestowed on me her choicest workmanship) 

Shall not be thy defence : for, since thy lip 

Met mine first, years long past — since thine eye 

kindled 
With soft fire under mine — I have not dwindled, 
Nor changed in mind or body, or in aught, 
But as love changes what it loveth not 
After long years and many trials. 

" How vain 
Are words. I thought never to speak again, 
Not even in secret, not to my own heart — 
But from my lips the unwilling accents start, 
And from my pen the words flow as I write, 
Dazzling my eyes with scalding tears. My sight 
Is dim to see that charactered in vain 
On this unfeeling leaf which burns the brain 
And eats into it, blotting all things fair 
And wise and good which time had written there. 
Those who inflict must suffer ; for they see 
The work of their own hearts, and that must be 
Our chastisement or recompense. — child ! 
I would that thine were like to be more mild, 
For both our wretched sakes — for thine the most, 
Who feel'st already all that thou hast lost, 
Without the power to wish it thine again. 
And, as slow years pass, a funereal train, 
Each with the ghost of some lost hope or friend 
Following it like its shadow, wilt thou bend 
No thought on my dead memory ? 

"Alas, love ! 
Fear me not : against thee I'd not move 
A finger in despite. Do I not live 
That thou mayst have less bitter cause to grieve ? 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 93 



I give thee tears for scorn, and love for hate ;' 

And, that thy lot may be less desolate 

Than his on whom thus tramplest, I refrain 

From that sweet sleep which medicines all pain. 

Then — when thou speakest of me — never say 

1 He could forgive not.' — Here I cast away 

All human passions, all revenge, all pride ; 

I think, speak, act, no ill ; I do not hide 

Under these words, like embers, every spark 

Of that which has consumed me. Quick and dark 

The grave is yawning : as its roof shall cover 

My limbs with dust and worms, under and over, 

So let oblivion hide this grief. — The air 

Closes upon my accents, as despair 

Upon my heart — let death upon despair ! " 

He ceased, and overcome leant back awhile ; 

Then rising, with a melancholy smile, 

Went to a sofa, and lay down, and slept 

A heavy sleep ; and in his dreams he wept, 

And muttered some familiar name, and we 

Wept without shame in his society. 

I think I never was impressed so much : 

The man who were not must have lacked a touch 

Of human nature. 

Then we lingered not, 
Although our argument was quite forgot ; 
But, calling the attendants, went to dine 
At Maddalo's. Yet neither cheer nor wine 
Could give us spirits ; for we talked of him, 
And nothing else, till daylight made stars dim. 
And we agreed it was some dreadful ill 
Wrought on him boldly, yet unspeakable, 
By a dear friend ; some deadly change in love 



94 JULIAN AND MADDALO. 



Of one vowed deeply (which he dreamed not of), 
For whose sake he, it seemed, had fixed a blot 
Of falsehood in his mind, which flourished not 
But in the light of all-beholding truth ; 
And, having stamped this canker on his youth, 
She had abandoned him. And how much more 
Might be his woe we guessed not. He had store 
Of friends and fortune once, as we could guess 
From his nice habits and his gentleness : 
These now were lost — it were a grief indeed 
If he had changed one unsustaining reed 
For all that such a man might else adorn. 
The colours of his mind seemed yet unworn ; 
For the wild language of his grief was high — 
Such as in measure were called poetry. 
And I remember one remark which then 
Maddalo made : he said — ' ' Most wretched men 
Are cradled into poetry by wrong : 
They learn in suffering what they teach in song." 

If I had been an unconnected man, 

I, from this moment, should have formed some plan 

Never to leave sweet Venice. For to me 

It was delight to ride by the lone sea : 

And then the town is silent — one may write 

Or read in gondolas, by day or night, 

Having the little brazen lamp alight, 

Unseen, uninterrupted. Books are there, 

Pictures, and casts from all those statues fair 

Which were twin-born with poetry, and all 

We see in towns, with little to recall 

Regret for the green country. I might sit 

In Maddalo's great palace, and his wit 

And subtle talk would cheer the winter night. 



JULIAN AND MADDALO. 95 



And make me know mj^self : and the fire-light 
"Would flash upon our faces, till the day- 
Might dawn, and make me wonder at my stay. 
But I had friends in London too. The chief 
Attraction here was that I sought relief 
From the deep tenderness that maniac wrought 
Within me. . . . 'Twas perhaps an idle thought, 
But I imagined that — if day by day 
I watched him, and seldom went away, 
And studied all the beatings of his heart 
With zeal (as men study some stubborn art 
For their own good), and could by patience find 
An entrance to the caverns of his mind — 
I might reclaim him from his dark estate 
In friendship I had been most fortunate ; 
Yet never saw I one whom I would call 
More willingly my friend. — And this was all 
Accomplished not. Such dreams of baseless good 
Oft come and go, in crowds or solitude, 
And leave no trace : but what I now designed 
Made, for long years, impression on my mind. 
The following morning, urged by my affairs, 
I left bright Venice, 

After many years 
And many changes, I returned. The name 
Of Venice, and its aspect, was the same. 
But Maddalo was travelling, far away, 
Among the mountains of Armenia : 
His dog was dead : his child had now become 
A woman, such as it has been my doom 
To meet with few ; a wonder of this earth, 
Where there is little of transcendent worth — 
Like one of Shakespeare's women. Kindly she, 
And with a manner beyond courtesy, 



96 JULIAN AND MADDALO. 



Received her father's friend ; and, when I asked 

Of the lorn maniac, she her memory tasked, 

And told, as she had heard, the mournful tale 

That the poor sufferer's health began to fail 

Two years from my departure ; but that then 

The lady who had left him came again. 

" Her mien had been imperious, but she now 

Looked meek ; perhaps remorse had brought her low. 

Her coming made him better ; and they stayed 

Together at my father's — (for I played, 

As I remember, with the lady's shawl ; 

I might be six years old). — But, after all, 

She left him." 

" Why, her heart must have been tough ! 
How did it end ? " 

• ' And was not this enough ? 
They met, they parted." 

" Child, is there no more ? " 

"Something within that interval which bore 

The stamp of why they parted, how they met. — 

Yet, if thine aged eyes disdain to wet 

Those wrinkled cheeks with youth's remembered tears, 

Ask me no more ; but let the silent years 

Be closed and cered over their memory — 

As yon mute marble where their corpses lie." 

T urged and questioned still. She told me how 
All happened — But the cold world shall not know. 




POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817. 



MARIANNE'S DREAM. 



1. A PALE Dream came to a Lady fair, 
/TL And said, "A boon, a boon, I pray ! 
I know the secrets of the air ; 

And things are lost in the glare of day, 
Which I can make the sleeping see 
If they will put their trust in me. 

2. " And thou shalt know of things unknown, 

If thou wilt let me rest between 
The veiny lids whose fringe is thrown 

Over thine eyes so dark and sheen." 
And half in hope and half in fright 
The Lady closed her eyes so bright. 

3. At first all deadly shapes were driven 

Tumultuously across her sleep, 
And o'er the vast cope of bending heaven 

All ghastly- visaged clouds did sweep ; 
And the Lady ever looked to spy 
If the golden sun shone forth on high. 
* Q 



98 MARIANNE'S DREAM. 



And, as towards the east she turned, 
She saw, aloft in the morning air 

"Which now with hues of sunrise burned, 
A great black anchor rising there ; 

And wherever the Lady turned her eyes 

It hung before her in the skies. 

The sky was blue as the summer sea ; 

The depths were cloudless overhead ; 
The air was calm as it could be ; 

There was no sight or sound of dread. 
But that black anchor floating still 
Over the piny eastern hill. 

The Lady grew sick with a weight of fear 

To see that anchor ever hanging, 
And veiled her eyes. She then did hear 

The sound as of a dim low clanging ; 
And looked abroad if she might know 
Was it aught else, or but the flow 
Of the blood in her own veins to and fro. 

There was a mist in the sunless air, 

Which shook as it were with an earthquake 
shock ; 
But the very weeds that blossomed there 

Were moveless, and each mighty rock 
Stood on its basis steadfastly ; 
The anchor was seen no more on high. 

But piled around, with summits hid 

In lines of cloud at intervals, 
Stood many a mountain pyramid, 

Among whose everlasting walls 



MARIANNE'S DREAM. 99 



Two mighty cities shone, and ever 

Through the red mist their domes did quiver. 

9. On two dread mountains, from whose crest 

Might seem the eagle for her brood 

Would ne'er have hung her dizzy nest, 

Those tower-encircled cities stood. 
A vision strange such towers to see, 
Sculptured and wrought so gorgeously, 
Where human art could never be. 

10. And columns framed of marble white, 

And giant fanes, dome over dome 
Piled, and triumphant gates, all bright 

With workmanship which could not come 
From touch of mortal instrument, 
Shot o'er the vales, or lustre lent 
From their own shapes magnificent. 

11. But still the Lady heard that clang 

Filling the wide air far away, 
And still the mist whose light did hang 

Among the mountains shook alway ; 
So that the Lady's heart beat fast, 
As half in joy and half aghast 
On those high domes her look she cast. 

12. Sudden from out that city sprung 

A light that made the earth grow red ; 
Two flames that each with quivering tongue 

Licked its high domes, and overhead 
Among those mighty towers and fanes 
Dropped fire, as a volcano rains 
It sulphurous ruin on the plains. 



ioo MARIANNE'S DREAM. 



13. And hark ! a rush, as if the deep 

Had burst its bonds ! She looked behind, 
And saw over the western steep 

A raging flood descend, and wind 
Through that wide vale. She felt no fear, 
But said within herself, " 'Tis clear 
These towers are Nature's own, and she 
To save them has sent forth the sea," 

14. And now those raging billows came 

Where that fair Lady sate ; and she 
Was borne towards the showering flame 

By the wild waves heaped tumultuously, 
And, on a little plank, the flow 
Of the whirlpool bore her to and fro. 

15. The flames were fiercely vomited 

From every tower and every dome, 
And dreary light did wildly shed 

O'er that vast flood's suspended foam 
Beneath the smoke which hung its night 
On the stained cope of heaven's light. 

16. The plank whereon that Lady sate [about, 

Was driven through the chasms, about and 
Between the peaks so desolate 

Of the drowning mountains, in and out, 
As the thistle-beard on a whirlwind sails — 
While the flood was filling those hollow vales. 

17. At last her plank an eddy crossed, 

And bore her to the city's wall, 
Which now the flood had reached almost ; 
It might the stoutest heart appal 



MARIANNE'S DREAM. 101 



To hear the fire roar and hiss 

Through the domes of those mighty palaces. 

18. The eddy whirled her round and round 

Before a gorgeous gate which stood 
Piercing the cloud of smoke which bound 

Its aery arch with light like blood. 
She looked on that gate of marble clear 

With wonder that extinguished fear — 

19. For it was filled with sculptures rarest 

Of forma most beautiful and strange, 
Like nothing human, but the fairest, 

Of winged shapes whose legions range 
Throughout the sleep of those that are, 
Like this same Lady, good and fair. 

20. And, as she looked, still lovelier grew 

Those marble forms ; the sculptor sure 
Was a strong spirit, and the hue 

Of his own mind did there endure 
A.fter the touch whose power had braided 
Such grace was in some sad change faded. 

21. She looked. The flames were dim, the flood 

Grew tranquil as a woodland river 
Winding through hills in solitude ; 

Those marble shapes then seemed to quiver, 
And their fair limbs to float in motion 
Like weeds unfolding in the ocean. 

22. And their lips moved — one seemed to speak — 

When suddenly the mountain cracked, 



102 DEATH. 



And though the chasm the flood did break 

With an earth-uplifting cataract. 
The statues gave a joyous scream — 
And on its wings the pale thin Dream 
Lifted the Lady from the stream. 

23. The dizzy flight of that phantom pale 
Waked the fair Lady from her sleep ; 
And she arose, while from the veil 

Of her dark eyes the Dream did creep, 
And she walked about as one who knew 
That sleep has sights as clear and true 
As any waking eyes can view. 
Marlow. 



DEATH. 



THEY die — the dead return not. Misery 
Sits near an open grave, and calls them over, 
A youth with hoary hair and haggard eye. 

They are the names of kindred, friend, and lover, 
Which he so feebly calls. They all are gone, 
Fond wretch, all dead ! Those vacant names alone, 
This most familiar scene, my pain, 
These tombs — alone remain. 

Misery, my sweetest friend, oh, weep no more ! 

Thou wilt not be consoled ? I wonder not : 
For I have seen thee from thy dwelling's door 

Watch the calm sunset with them, and this sjaot 



TO CONSTANT/A, SINGING. 103 



"Was even as bright and calm but transitory — 
And now thy hopes are gone, thy hair is hoary. 
This most familiar scene, my pain, 
These tombs — alone remain. 



TO CONSTANTIA, SINGING. 

1. 'T^HUS to be lost and thus to sink and die 

X Perchance were death indeed ! — Constantia, 
turn ! 
In thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie, 
Even though the sounds which were thy voice, 
which burn 
Between thy lips, are laid to sleep ; 
Within thy breath, and on thy hair, like odour, it is yet, 
And from thy touch like fire doth leap. 
Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet ; 
Alas, that the torn heart can bleed but not forget ! 

2. A breathless awe, like the swift change 
Unseen but felt in youthful slumbers, 
Wild, sweet, but uncommunicably strange, 
Thou breathest now in fast-ascending numbers. 
The cope of heaven seems rent and cloven 

By the enchantment of thy strain, 
And on my shoulders wings are woven, 
To follow its sublime career 

Beyond the mighty moons that wane 
Upon the verge of Nature's utmost sphere, 
Till the world's shadowy walls are past and disappear. 



io4 SONNET.— OZYMANDIAS. 



3. Her voice is hovering o'er my soul — it lingers 

O'ershadowing it with soft and lulling wings : 
The blood and life within those snowy fingers , 
Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings. 
My brain is wild, my breath comes quick — 

The blood is listening in my frame, 
And thronging shadows, fast and thick, 
Fall on my overflowing eyes ; 

My heart is quivering like a flame ; 

As morning dew that in the sunbeam dies, 

I am dissolved in these consuming ecstasies. 

4. I have no life, Constantia, now, but thee, 

Whilst, like the world-surrounding air, thy song 
Flows on, and fills all things with melody. 
Now is thy voice a tempest swift and strong, 
On which, like one in trance upborne, 
Secure o'er rocks and waves I sweep, 
Rejoicing like a cloud of morn : 
Now 'tis the breath of summer night, 
Which, when the starry waters sleep, 
Round western isles with incense-blossoms bright 
Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptuous flight. 



SONNET. -OZYMANDIAS. 

TMET a traveller from an antique land 
Who said : " Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, 

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown 
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command 



TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR. 105 



Tell that its sculptor well those passions read 

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, 
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. 
And on the pedestal these words appear : * 

' My name is Ozymandias, king of kings : 
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair ! ' 

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay 
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, 

The lone and level sands stretch far away." 



TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR. 

THY country's curse is on thee, darkest crest 
Of that foul, knotted, many-headed worm 
Which rends our Mother's bosom — priestly pest ! 
Masked resurrection of a buried form ! 

Thy country's curse is on thee ! Justice sold, 
Truth trampled, Nature's landmarks overthrown, 

And heaps of fraud-accumulated gold, 
Plead, loud as thunder, at Destruction's throne. 

And, whilst that slow sure Angel which aye stands 

Watching the beck of Mutability 
Delays to execute her high commands, 

And, though a nation weeps, spares thine and thee ; 

Oh, let a father's curse be on thy soul, 

And let a daughter's hope be on thy tomb, 

And both on thy grey head a leaden cowl 
To weigh thee down to thine approaching doom ! 



io6 TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR. 



5. I curse thee by a parent's outraged love ; 

By hopes long cherished and too lately lost ; 
By gentle feelings thou couldst never prove ; 
By griefs which thy stern nature never crossed ; 

6. By those infantine smiles of happy light 

Which were a fire within a stranger's hearth, 
Quenched even when kindled, in untimely night 
Hiding the promise of a lovely birth ; 

7. By those unpractised accents of young speech, 

Which he who is a father thought to frame 
To gentlest lore such as the wisest teach. [shame ! 
Thou strike the lyre of mind ! Oh grief and 

8. By all the happy see in children's growth, 

That undeveloped flower of budding years, 
Sweetness and sadness interwoven both, 
Source of the sweetest hopes and saddest fears : 

9. By all the days, under a hireling's care, 

Of dull constraint and bitter heaviness — 
Oh wretched ye if ever any were, 
Sadder than orphans yet not fatherless — 

10. By the false cant which on their innocent lips 

Must hang like poison on an opening bloom ; 
By the dark creeds which cover with eclipse 
Their pathway from the cradle to the tomb ; 

11. By thy most impious hell, and all its terrors ; 

By all the grief, the madness, and the guilt 
Of thine impostures, which must be their errors, 
That sand on which thy crumbling power is built ; 



TO WILLIAM SHELLEY. 107 



12. By thy complicity with lust and hate, 

Thy thirst for tears, thy hunger after gold, 
The ready frauds which ever on thee wait, 
The servile arts in which thou hast grown old ; 

13. By thy most killing sneer, and hy thy smile, 

By all the acts and snares of thy black den, 
And — for thou canst outweep the crocodile — 
By thy false tears, those millstones braining men ; 

14. By all the hate which checks a father's love ; 

By all the scorn which kills a father's care ; 
By those most impious hands that dared remove 
Nature's high bounds ; by thee ; and by despair — 

15. Yes, the despair which bids a father groan, 

And cry, ' ' My children are no longer mine ; 

The blood within those veins may be mine own. 

But, tyrant, their polluted souls are thine ! " 

16. I curse thee, though I hate thee not. slave ! 

If thou couldst quench the earth-consuming hell 
Of which thou art a demon, on thy grave 
This curse should be a blessing. Fare thee well ! 



T 



TO WILLIAM SHELLEY. 

HE billows on the beach are leaping around it ; 

The bark is weak and frail ; 
The sea looks black, and the clouds that bound it 
Darkly strew the gale. 



io8 TO WILLIAM SHELLEY. 



Come with me, thou delightful child, 
Come with me ! Though the wave is wild, 
And the winds are loose, we must not stay, 
Or the slaves of law may rend thee away. 

2. They have taken thy brother and sister dear, 

They have made them unfit for thee ; 
They have withered the smile and dried the tear 

Which should have been sacred to me. 
To a blighting faith and a cause of crime 
They have bound them slaves in youthly time ; 
And they will curse my name and thee 
Because we fearless are and free. 

3. Come thou, beloved as thou art ! 

Another sleepeth still 
Near thy sweet mother's anxious heart, 

Which thou with joy wilt fill, 
With fairest smiles of wonder thrown 
On that which is indeed our own, 
And which in distant lands will be 
The dearest playmate unto thee. 

4. Fear not the tyrants will rule for ever, 

Or the priests of the evil faith ; 
They stand on the brink of that raging river 

Whose waves they have tainted with death. 
It is fed from the depth of a thousand dells, 
Around them it foams, and rages, and swells ; 
And their swords and their sceptres I floating see, 
Like wrecks, on the surge of eternity. 

5. Rest, rest, shriek not, thou gentle child ! 

The rocking of the boat thou fearest, 



LINES. 109 



And the cold spray and the clamour wild ? 
There ! sit between us two, thou dearest- 
Me and thy mother. "Well we know 
The storm at which thou tremblest so, 
With all its dark and hungry graves, 
Less cruel than the savage slaves 
Who hunt thee o'er these sheltering waves. 



6. This hour will in thy memory 

Be a dream of days forgotten ; 
We soon shall dwell- by the azure sea 
Of serene and golden Italy, 
Or Greece the mother of the free. 
And I will teach thine infant tongue 
To call upon their heroes old 
In their own language, and will mould 
Thy growing spirit in the flame 
Of Grecian lore ; that by such name 
A patriot's birthright thou mayst claim. 



LINES. 



THAT time is dead for ever, child, 
Drowned, frozen, dead for ever ! 
We look on the past ; 
And stare aghast 
At the spectres, wailing, pale, and ghast, 
Of hopes which thou and I beguiled 
To death on life's dark river. 



no ON FANNY GOD WIN. 



The stream we gazed on then rolled by ; 
Its waves are unreturning ; 
But we yet stand 
In a lone land, 
Like tombs to mark the memory 
Of hopes and fears which fade and fly 
In the light of life's dim morning. 

Uh November 1817. 



ON FANNY GODWIN. 

HER voice did quiver as we parted ; 
Yet knew I not that heart was broken 
From which it came, and I departed 

Heeding not the words then spoken. 
Misery — Misery, 
This world is all too wide for thee I 



LINES TO A CRITIC. 

1. T T ONEY from silkworms who can gather 
J~l Or silk from the yellow bee ? 

The grass may grow in winter weather 
As soon as hate in me. 

2. Hate men who cant, and men who pray, 

And men who rail, like thee ; 
An equal passion to repay 
They are not coy like me. 



LINES TO A CRITIC. 



in 



3. Or seek some slave of power and gold 

To be thy dear heart's mate ; 
Thy love will move that bigot cold 
Sooner than me thy hate. 

4. A passion like the one I prove 

Cannot divided be ; 
I hate thy want of truth and love — 
How should I then hate thee ? 



December 1817. 




POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. 



PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES. 

LISTEN, listen, Mary mine, 
To the whisper of the Apennine. 
It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar ; 
Or like the sea on a northern shore, 
Heard in its raging ebb and flow 
By the captives pent in the cave below. 
The Apennine in the light of day 
Is a mighty mountain dim and grey 
Which between the earth and sky doth lay : 
But, when night comes, a chaos dread 
On the dim starlight then is spread, 
And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm. 



tth May 1818. 




ON A DEAD VIOLET. 113 

ON A DEAD VIOLET. 
To Miss . 

THE odour from the flower is gone 
"Which like thy kisses breathed on me ; 
The colour from the flower is flown 

Which glowed of thee and only thee ! 

A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form, 

It lies on my abandoned breast ; 
And mocks the heart, which yet is warm 

With cold and silent rest. 

I weep — my tears revive it not ; 

I sigh — it breathes no more on me : 
Its mute and uncomplaining lot 

Is such as mine should be. 



THE PAST. 

WILT thou forget the happy hours 
Which we buried in Love's sweet bowers, 
Heaping over their corpses cold 
Blossoms and leaves instead of mould ? 
Blossoms which were the joys that fell, 
And leaves, the hopes that yet remain. 

Forget the dead, the past ? Oh yet 

There are ghosts that may take revenge for it ! 



ii4 SONNET. 



Memories that make the heart a tomb, 
Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom, 
And with ghastly whispers tell 
That joy, once lost, is pain. 



SONNET. 

LIFT not the painted veil which those who live 
Call Life ; though unreal shapes be pictured there, 
And it but mimic all we would believe 

With colours idly spread. Behind, lurk Fear 
And Hope, twin Destinies, who ever weave 

Their shadows o'er the chasm sightless and drear. 
I knew one who had lifted it — he sought, 

For his lost heart was tender, things to love, 
But found them not, alas ! nor was there aught 

The world contains in which he could approve. 

Through the unheeding many he did move, 
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot 

Upon this gloomy scene, a spirit that strove 
For truth, and, like the Preacher, found it not, 



LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN 
HILLS. 

MANY a green isle needs must be 
In the deep wide sea of Misery ; 
Or the mariner, worn and wan, 
Never thus could voyage on — 



THE E UGANEAN HILLS. 1 1 5 



Day and night, and night and day. 
Drifting on his dreary way, 
With the solid darkness black 
Closing round his vessel's track ; 
Whilst, above, the sunless sky, 
Big with clouds, hangs heavily— 
And, behind, the tempest fleet 
Hurries on with lightning feet, 
Riving sail and cord and plank, 
•nil the ship has almost drank 
Death from the o'er-brimming deep, 
And sinks down, down, like that sleep 
When the dreamer seems to be 
Weltering through eternity, 
And the dim low line before 
Of a dark and distant shore 
Still recedes, as — ever still 
Longing with divided will, 
But no power to seek or shun — 
He is ever drifted on 
O'er the unreposing wave 
To the haven of the grave. 
What if there no friends will greet ? 
What if there no heart will meet 
His with love's impatient beat ? 
Wander wheresoe'er he may, 
Can he dream before that day 
To find refuge from distress 
In friendship's smile, in love's caress ? 
Then 'twill wreak him little woe 
Whether such there be or no. 
Senseless is the breast, and cold, 
Which relenting love would fold ; 
Bloodless are the veins, and chill, 



1 16 THE E UGANEAN HILLS. 



Which the pulse of pain did fill ; 
Every little living nerve 
That from bitter words did swerve 
Round the tortured lips and brow 
Is like a sapless leaflet now 
Frozen upon December's bough. 

On the beach of a northern sea 

Which tempests shake eternally 

As once the wretch there lay to sleep, 

Lies a solitary heap, 

One white skull and seven dry bones, 

On the margin of the stones, 

Where a few grey rushes stand, 

Boundaries of the sea and land. 

Nor is heard one voice of wail 

But the sea-mews' as they sail 

O'er the billows of the gale, 

Or the whirlwind up and down 

Howling — like a slaughtered town, 

Where a king in glory rides 

Through the pomp of fratricides. 

Those unburied bones around 

There is many a mournful sound ; 

There is no lament for him, 

Like a sunless vapour, dim, 

Who once clothed with life and thought 

What now moves nor murmurs not. 

Ay, many flowering islands lie 
In the waters of wide Agony — 
To such a one this morn was led 
My bark, by soft winds piloted. 
'Mid the mountains Euganean, 



THE EUGANEAN HILLS. 117 



I stood listening to the psean 

With which the legioned rooks did hail 

The sun's uprise majestical. 

Gathering round with wings all hoar, 

Through the dewy mist they soar 

Like grey shades, till the eastern heaven 

Bursts ; and then, as clouds of even 

Flecked with fire and azure lie 

In the unfathomable sky, 

So their plumes of purple grain, 

Starred with drops of golden rain, 

Gleam above the sunlight woods, 

As in silent multitudes 

On the morning's fitful gale 

Through the broken mist they sail, 

And the vapours cloven and gleaming 

Follow, down the dark steep streaming — 

Till all is bright, and clear, and still 

Round the solitary hill. 

Beneath is spread like a green sea 
The waveless plain of Lombardy, 
Bounded by the vaporous air, 
Islanded by cities fair. 
Underneath Day's azure eyes, 
Ocean's nursling, Venice lies — 
A peopled labyrinth of walls, 
Amphitrite's destined halls, 
Which her hoary sire now paves 
With his blue and beaming waves. 
Lo ! the sun upsprings behind, 
Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined 
On the level quivering line 
Of the waters crystalline ; 



1 1 8 THE E UGANEAN HILLS. 



And before that chasm of light, 
As within a furnace bright, 
Column, tower, and dome, and spire, 
Shine like obelisks of fire, 
Pointing with inconstant motion 
From the altar of dark ocean 
To the sapphire-tinted skies ; 
As the flames of sacrifice 
From the marble shrines did rise, 
As to pierce the dome of gold 
Where Apollo spoke of old, 

Sun-girt City ! thou hast been 
Ocean's child, and then his queen. 
Now is come a darker day ; 
And thou soon must be his prey, 
If the power that raised thee here 
Hallow so thy watery bier. 
A less drear ruin then than now, 
With thy conquest-branded brow 
Stooping to the slave of slaves 
From thy throne, among the waves 
Wilt thou be when the sea-mew 
Flies, as once before it flew, 
O'er thine isles depopulate, 
And all is in its ancient state ; 
Save where many a palace-gate 
With green sea-flowers overgrown 
Like a rock of ocean's own, 
Topples o'er the abandoned sea 
As the tides change sullenly. 
The fisher on his watery way 
Wandering at the close of day 
Will spread his sail and seize his oar 



THE E UGANEAN HILLS. 1 1 9 



Till he pass the gloomy shore, 
Lest thy dead should, from their sleep 
Bursting o'er the starlight deep, 
Lead a rapid masque of death 
O'er the waters of his path. 

Those who alone thy towers behold 
Quivering through aerial gold, 
As I now behold them here, 
"Would imagine not they were 
Sepulchres where human forms, 
Like pollution-nourished worms, 
To the corpse of greatness cling, 
Murdered and now mouldering. 
But, if Freedom should awake 
In her omnipotence, and shake 
From the Celtic Anarch's hold 
All the keys of dungeons cold 
Where a hundred cities lie 
Chained like thee ingloriously, 
Thou and all thy sister band 
Might adorn this sunny land, 
Twining memories of old time 
With new virtues more sublime. 
If not, perish thou and they — 
Clouds which stain truth's rising day, 
By her sun consumed away ! 
Earth can spare ye ; while like flowers, 
In the waste of years and hours, 
From your dust new nations spring 
With more kindly blossoming. 

Perish ! Let there only he, 
Floating o'er thy hearthless sea 



i2o THE EUGANEAN HILLS. 



As the garment of thy sky 
Clothes the world immortally, 
One remembrance, more sublime 
Than the tattered pall of time 
Which scarce hides thy visage wan ; 
That a tempest-cleaving swan 
Of the songs of Albion, 
Driven from his ancestral streams 
By the might of evil dreams, 
Found a nest in thee ; and ocean 
Welcomed him with such emotion 
That its joy grew his, and sprung 
From his lips like music flung 
O'er a mighty thunder-fit, 
Chastening terror. What though yet 
Poesy's unfailing river, 
Which through Albion winds for ever, 
Lashing with melodious wave 
Many a sacred poet's grave, 
Mourn its latest nursling fled ? 
What though thou with all thy dead 
Scarce canst for this fame repay 
Aught thine own — oh ! rather say, 
Though thy sins and slaveries foul 
Overcloud a sunlike soul ? 
As the ghost of Homer clings 
Round Scamander's wasting springs ; 
As divinest Shakespeare's might 
Fills Avon and the world with light, 
Like Omniscient Power, which he 
Imaged 'mid mortality ; 
As the love from Petrarch's urn 
Yet amid yon hills doth burn, 
A quenchless lamp by which the heart 



THE EUGANEAN HILLS. 121 


... 

Sees things unearthly ; so thou art, 


Mighty spirit ! so shall be 


The city that did refuge thee ! 


Lo, the sun floats up the sky, 


Like thought- winged Liberty, 


Till the universal light 


Seems to level plain and height. 


From the sea a mist has spread, 


And the beams of morn lie dead 


On the towers of Venice now, 


Like its glory long ago. 


By the skirts of that grey cloud 


Many-domed Padua proud 


Stands, a peopled solitude 


'Mid the harvest-shining plain ; . 


Where the peasant heaps his grain 


In the garner of his foe, 


And the milk-white oxen slow 


"With the purple vintage .strain 


Heaped upon the creaking wain, 


That the brutal Celt may swill 


Drunken sleep with savage will. 


And the sickle to the sword 


Lies unchanged, though many a lord, 


Like a weed whose shade is poison, 


Overgrows this region's foison, 


Sheaves of whom are ripe to come 


To destruction's harvest-home. 


Men must reap the things they sow 


Force from force must ever flow, 


Or worse : but 'tis a bitter woe 


That love or reason cannot change 


The despot's rage, the slave's revenge. 



122 THE EUGANEAN HILLS. 



Padua ! (thou within whose walls 

Those mute guests at festivals, 

Son and Mother, Death and Sin, 

Played at dice for Ezzelin, 

Till Death cried, " I win, I win ! " 

And Sin cursed to lose the wager ; 

But Death promised, to assuage her, 

That he would petition for 

Her to be made Vice-Emperor, 

When the destined years were o'er, 

Over all between the Po 

And the eastern Alpine snow, 

Under the mighty Austrian : 

Sin smiled so as Sin only can ; 

And, since that time, ay long before 

Both have ruled from shore to shore, 

That incestuous pair who follow 

Tyrants as the sun the swallow, 

As repentance follows crime, 

And as changes follow time) — 

In thine halls the lamp of learning, 

Padua, now no more is burning. 

Like a meteor whose wild way 

Is lost over the grave of day, 

It gleams betrayed and to betray. 

Once remotest nations came 

To adore that sacred flame, 

When it lit not many a hearth 

On this cold and gloomy earth ; 

Now new fires from antique light 

Spring beneath the wide world's might — 

But their spark lies dead in thee, 

Trampled out by Tyranny. 



THE EUGANEAN HILLS. 123 



As the Norway woodman quells, 
In the depth of piny dells, 
One light flame among the brakes, 
While the boundless forest shakes, 
And its mighty trunks are torn 
By the fire thus lowly born — 
The spark beneath his feet is dead ; 
He starts to see the flames it fed 
Howling through the darkened sky 
With myriad tongues victoriously, 
And sinks down in fear — so thou, 
Tyranny ! beholdest now 
Light around thee, and thou hearest 
The loud flames ascend, and fearest. 
Grovel on the earth ! ay, hide 
In the dust thy purple pride ! 

Noon descends around me now. 
'Tis the noon of autumn's glow ; 
When a soft and purple mist, 
Like a vaporous amethyst, 
Or an air-dissolved star 
Mingling light and fragrance, far 
From the curved horizon's bound 
To the point of heaven's profound 
Fills the overflowing sky. 
And the plains that silent lie 
Underneath ; the leaves unsodden 
Where the infant Frost has trodden 
With his morning-winged feet 
Whose bright print is gleaming yet ; 
And the red and golden vines, 
Piercing with their trellised lines 
The rough dark-skirted wilderness ; 



124 THE EUGANEAN HILLS. 



The dun and bladed grass no less, 

Pointing from this hoary tower 

In the windless air ; the flower 

Glimmering at my feet ; the line 

Of the olive-sandalled Apennine 

In the south dimly islanded ; 

And the Alps, whose snows are spread 

High between the clouds and sun ; 

And of living things each one ; 

And my spirit, which so long 

Darkened this swift stream of song — 

Interpenetrated lie 

By the glory of the sky : 

Be it love, light, harmony, 

Odour, or the soul of all 

Which from heaven like dew doth fall. 

Or the mind which feeds this verse 

Peopling the lone universe. 

Noon descends ; and after noon 

Autumn's evening meets me soon, 

Leading the infantine moon, 

And that one star which to her 

Almost seems to minister 

Half the crimson light she brings 

From the sunset's radiant springs. 

And the soft dreams of the morn 

(Which like winged winds had borne, 

To that silent isle which lies 

'Mid remembered agonies, 

The frail bark of this lone being) 

Pass, to other sufferers fleeing ; 

And its ancient pilot, Pain, 

Sits beside the helm again. 



THE EUGANEAN HILLS. 125 



Other flowering isles must be 

In the sea of Life and Agony : 

Other spirits float and flee 

O'er that gulf. Even now perhaps 

On some rock the wild wave wraps, 

With folded wings, they waiting sit 

?or my bark, to pilot it 

To some calm and blooming cove ; 

Where for me and those I love 

May a windless bower be built, 

Far from passion, pain, and guilt. 

In a dell 'mid lawny hills 

"Which the wild sea-murmur fills, 

And soft sunshine, and the sound 

Of old forests echoing round, 

And the light and smell divine 

Of all flowers that breathe and shine. 

"We may live so happy there 

That the Spirits of the Air, 

Envying us, may even entice 

To our healing paradise 

The polluting multitude. 

But their rage would be subdued 

By that clime divine and calm, 

And the winds whose wings rain balm 

On the uplifted soul, and leaves 

Under which the bright sea heaves ; 

"While each breathless interval 

In their whisperings musical 

The inspired soul supplies 

"With its own deep melodies, 

And the love which heals all strife, 

Circling, like the breath of life, 

All things in that sweet abode 



126 STANZAS. 



With its own mild brotherhood. 
They, not it, would change ; and soon 
Every sprite beneath the moon 
"Would repent its envy vain, 
And the earth grow young again. 

October 1818. 



STANZAS 

WRITTEN IN DEJECTION NEAR NAPLES. 

1. 'T^HE sun is warm, the sky is clear 

Y The waves are dancing fast and bright ; 
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear 

Thp purple noon's transparent might ; 

The breath of the moist earth is light 
Around its unexpanded buds ; 

Like many a voice of one delight, 
The winds', the birds', the ocean floods', 
The city's voice itself, is soft like Solitude's. 

2. I see the deep's untrampled floor 

With green and purple sea- weed strown ; 
I see the waves upon the shore, 

Like light dissolved, in star-showers thrown. 

I sit upon the sands alone. 
The lightning of the noontide ocean 

Is flashing round me, and a tone 
Arises from its measured motion — 
How sweet, did any heart now share in my emotion ! 



STANZAS. 127 



3. Alas ! I have nor hope nor health, 

Nor peace within nor calm around ; 
Nor that content, surpassing wealth, 

The sage in meditation found, 

And walked with inward glory crowned ; 
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure. 

Others I see whom these surround — 
Smiling they live, and call life pleasure ; 
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure. 

4. Yet now despair itself is mild, 

Even as the winds and waters are ; 
I could lie down like a tired child, 

And weep away the life of care 

Which I have borne and yet must bear — 
Till death like sleep might steal on me, 

And I might feel in the warm air 
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea 
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony. 

5! Some might lament that I were cold, 

As I when this sweet day is gone, 

"Which my lost heart, too soon grown old, 

Insults with this untimely moan. 

They might lament — for I am one 

Whom men love not, and yet regret ; 

Unlike this day, which, when the sun 
Shall on its stainless glory set, 
Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet, 

December 1818. 



128 MISERY. 



MISERY. 

1. /~* OME, be happy — sit near me, 
y^s Shadow-vested Misery : 
Coy, unwilling, silent bride, 
Mourning in thy robe of pride, 
Desolation deified ! 

2. Come, be happy — sit near me { 
Sad as I may seem to thee, 

I am happier far than thou. 
Lady whose imperial brow 
Is endiademed with woe. 

3. Misery ! we have known each other, 
Like a sister and a brother 
Living in the same lone home, 
Many years : we must live some 
Hours or ages yet to come. 

4. 'Tis an evil lot, and yet 
Let us make the best of it ; 

If love can live when pleasure dies, 
We two will love, till in our eyes 
This heart's hell seem paradise. 

5. Come, be happy — lie thee down 
On the fresh grass newly mown, 
"Where the grasshopper doth sing 
Merrily — one joyous thing 

In a world of sorrowing. 



MISERY. 129 



6. There our tent shall be the willow, 
And mine arm shall be thy pillow : 
Sounds and odours, sorrowful 
Because they once were sweet, shall lull 
Us to slumber deep and dull. 

7. Ha ! thy frozen pulses flutter 
With a love thou dar'st not utter. 
Thou art murmuring — thou art weeping- 
Is thine icy bosom leaping, 

While my burning heart lies sleeping ? 

8. Kiss me — oh ! thy lips are cold ! 
Round my neck thine arms enfold — 
They are soft, but chill and dead ; 
And thy tears upon my head 

Burn like points of frozen lead. 

9. Hasten to the bridal bed — 
Underneath the grave 'tis spread : 
In darkness may our love be hid, 
Oblivion be our coverlid — 

May we rest, and none forbid. 

10. Clasp me, till our hearts be grown 
Like two lovers into one ; 

Till this dreadful transport may 

Like a vapour fade away 

In the sleep that lasts alway, 

11. We may dream in that long sleep 
That we are not those who weep ; 

* I 



i 3 o MISERY. 



Even as Pleasure dreams of thee, 

Life-deserting Misery, 

Thou mayst dream of her with me. 

12. Let us laugh and make our mirth 
At the shadows of the earth ; 

As dogs bay the moonlight clouds 
Which, like spectres wrapped in shrouds, 
Pass o'er night in multitudes. 

13. All the wide world, beside us, 
Show like multitudinous 
Puppets passing from a scene ; 
But what mockery can they mean 
Where I am — where thou hast been ? 




THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



TO MARY. 

(On her objecting to the following poem, upon the score of its 
containing no human interest.) 

1. T TOW, my dear Mary, are you critic-bitten 

fjL (For vipers kill, though dead) by some review — 
That you condemn these verses I have written, 

Because they tell no story, false or true ? 
What though no mice are caught by a young kitten ? 

May it not leap and play as grown cats do, 
Till its claws come ? Prithee, for this one time, 
Content thee with a visionary rhyme. 

2. What hand would crush the silken- winged fly, 

The youngest of inconstant April's minions, 
Because it cannot climb the purest sky, 

Where the swan sings amid the sun's dominions ? 
Not thine. Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die 

When Day shall hide within her twilight pinions 
The lucent eyes and the eternal smile, 
Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile. 

3. To thy fair feet a winged Vision came, 

Whose date should have been longer than a day, 



l 3 2 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



And o'er thy head did beat its wings for fame, 
And in thy sight its fading plumes display ; 

The watery bow burned in the evening flame ; 
But the shower fell, the swift Sun went his way — 

And that is dead. Oh let me not believe 

That anything of mine is fit to live ! 

Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years 
Considering and retouching Peter Bell ; 

Watering his laurels with the killing tears 
Of slow dull care, so that their roots to hell 

Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres 
Of heaven with dewy leaves and flowers : this well 

May be, for heaven and earth conspire to foil 

The over-busy gardener's blundering toil. 

My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature 
As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise 

Clothes for our grandsons — but she matches Peter, 
Though he took nineteen years, and she three days, 

In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre 
She wears : he, proud as dandy with his stays, 

Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress 

Like King Lear's looped and windowed raggedness. 

If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow 
Scorched by hell's hyperequatorial climate 

Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow ; 
A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at ; 

In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello. 

If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor primate 

Can shrive you of that sin — if sin there be 

In love when it becomes idolatry. 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 133 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 

BEFORE those cruel twins whom at one birth 
Incestuous Change bore to her father Time, 
Error and Truth, had hunted from the earth 

All those bright natures which adorned its prime, 
And left us nothing to believe in, worth 

The pains of putting into learned rhyme, 
A Lady Witch there lived on Atlas mountain 
Within a cavern by a secret fountain. 

Her mother was one of the Atlan tides. 

The all-beholding Sun had ne'er beholden 
In his wide voyage o'er continents and seas 

So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden 
In the warm shadow of her loveliness ; 

He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden 
The chamber of grey rock in which she lay. 
She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away. 

'Tis said she was first changed into a vapour ; 

And then into a cloud — such clouds as flit 
(Like splendour-winged moths about a taper) 

Round the red west when the Sun dies in it ; 
And then into a meteor, such as caper 

On hill-tops when the Moon is in a fit ; 
Then into one of those mysterious stars [Mars. 

Which hide themselves between the Earth and 

Ten times the Mother of the Months had bent 
Her bow beside the folding-star, and bidden 

With that bright sign the billows to indent 
The sea-deserted sand — (like children chidden, 



134 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



At lier command they ever came and went) — 
Since in that cave a dewy splendour hidden 
Took shape and motion. With the living form 
Of this embodied Power the cave grew warm. 

5. A lovely Lady garmented in light 

From her own beauty : deep her eyes as are 
Two openings of unfathomable night 

Seen through a tempest's cloven roof ; her hair 
Dark ; the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight, 

Picturing her form. Her soft smiles shone afar ; 
And her low voice was heard like love, and drew 
All living things towards this wonder new. 

6. And first the spotted camelopard came ; 

And then the wise and fearless elephant ; 
Then the sly serpent, in the golden flame 

Of his own volumes intervolved. All gaunt 
And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame — 

They drank before her at her sacred fount ; 
And every beast of beating heart grew bold, 
Such gentleness and power even to behold. 

7. The brinded lioness led forth her young, 

That she might teach them how they should forego 
Their inborn thirst of death ; the pard unstrung 

His sinews at her feet, and sought to know, 
With looks whose motions spoke without a tongue, 

How he might be as gentle as the doe. 
The magic circle of her voice and eyes 
All savage natures did imparadise. 

8. And old Silenus, shaking a green stick 

Of lilies, and the Wood-gods in a crew, 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS 135 



Came blithe as in the olive copses thick 
Cicadse are, drunk with the noonday dew ; 

And Dry ope and Faunus followed quick, 

Teasing the god to sing them something new ; 

Till in this cave they found the Lady lone, 

Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone. 

9. And universal Pan, 'tis said, was there, 

And, though none saw him — through the adamant 

Of the deep mountains, through the trackless air, 
And through those living spirits, like a want — 

He passed out of his everlasting lair [pant, 

Where the quick heart of the great world dotli 

And felt that wondrous Lady all alone — 

And she felt him upon her emerald throne. 

10. And every Nymph of stream and spreading tree, 

And every Shepherdess of Ocean's flocks 
Who drives her white waves over the green sea, 

And Ocean with the brine on his grey locks, 
And quaint Priapus with his company — [rocks 

All came, much wondering how the enwombed 
Could have brought forth so beautiful a birth : 
Her love subdued their wonder and their mirth. 

11. The herdsmen and the mountain maidens came, 

And the rude kings of pastoral Garamant — 
Their spirits shook within them, as a flame 

Stirred by the air under a cavern gaunt : 
Pygmies and Polyphemes, by many a name, 

Centaurs and Satyrs, and such shapes as haunt 
Wet clefts — and lumps neither alive nor dead 
Dog-headed, bosom-eyed, and bird-footed. 



36 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



12. For she was beautiful. Her beauty made 

The bright world dim, and everything beside 
Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade. 

No thought of living spirit could abide 
(Which to her looks had ever been betrayed) 

On any object in the world so wide, 
On any hope within the circling skies — 
But on her form, and in her inmost eyes. 

13. "Which when the Lady knew, she took her spindle, 

And twined three threads of fleecy mist and three 
Long lines of light, such as the dawn may kindle 

The clouds, and waves, and mountains with, and 
she 
As many starbeams, ere their lamps could dwindle 

In the belated moon, wound skilfully ; 
And with these threads a subtle veil she wove — 
A shadow for the splendour of her love. 

11. The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling 

Were stored with magic treasures — sounds of air 

Which had the power all spirits of compelling, 
Folded in cells of crystal silence there ; 

Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling 
Will never die — yet, ere we are aware, 

The feeling and the sound are fled and gone, 

And the regret they leave remains alone. 

15. And there lay Visions swift, and sweet, and quaint, 
Each in its thin sheath like a chrysalis ; 

Some eager to burst forth ; some weak and faint 
With the soft burthen of intensest bliss 

It is their work to bear to many a saint 

Whose heart adores the shrine which holiest is, 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 137 



Even Love's ; and others, white, green, grey, and 

black, 
And of all shapes — and each was at her beck. 

And odours in a kind of aviary 

Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept, 

Clipped in a floating net a love-sick Fairy 

Had woven from dew-beams while the moon yet 
slept. 

As bats at the wired window of a dairy, 

They beat their vans ; and each was an adept — 

When loosed and missioned, making wings of 
winds — 

To stir sweet thoughts or sad in destined minds. 

And liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might 
Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep, 

And change eternal death into a night 

Of glorious dreams— or, if eyes needs must weep, 

Could make their tears all wonder and delight — 
She in her crystal phials did closely keep : 

If men could drink of those clear phials, 'tis said 

The living were not envied of the dead. 

Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange device, 
The works of some Saturnian Archimage, 

Which taught the expiations at whose price 
Men from the gods might win that happy age 

Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice — 

And which might quench the earth-consuming 
rage 

Of gold and blood, till men should live and move 

Harmonious as the sacred stars above — 



138 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



19. And how all things that seem untameable, 

Not to be checked and not to be confined, 
Obey the spells of Wisdom's wizard skill ; 

Time, earth, and fire, the ocean, and the wind, 
And all their shapes, and man's imperial will — 

And other scrolls whose writings did unbind 
The inmost lore of love — let the profane 
Tremble to ask what secrets they contain. 

20. And wondrous works of substances unknown, 

To which the enchantment of her Father's power 
Had changed those rugged blocks of savage stone, 

Were heaped in the recesses of her bower ; 
Carved lamps and chalices, and phials which shone 

In their own golden beams — each like a flower 
Out of whose depth a fire-fly shakes his light 
Under a cypress in a starless night. 

21. At first she lived alone in this wild home, 

And her own thoughts were each a minister, 
Clothing themselves or with the ocean foam, 

Or with the wind, or with the speed of fire, 
To work whatever purposes might come 

Into her mind : such power her mighty Sire 
Had girt them with, whether to fly or run 
Through all the regions which he shines upon. 

22. The Ocean-nymphs and Hamadryades, 

Oreads and Naiads with long weedy locks, 
Offered to do her bidding through the seas, 

Under the earth, and in the hollow rocks, 
And far beneath the matted roots of trees, 

And in the gnarled heart of stubborn oaks ; 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 139 



So they might live for ever in the light 
Of her sweet presence — each a satellite. 

" This may not be," the Wizard Maid replied. 

"The fountains where the Naiades bedew 
Their shining hair at length are drained and dried ; 

The solid oaks forget their strength, and strew 
Their latest leaf upon the mountains wide ; 

The boundless ocean like a drop of dew 
Will be consumed ; the stubborn centre must 
Be scattered like a cloud of summer dust. 

" And ye, with them, will perish one by one. 

If I must sigh to think that this shall be, 
If I must weep when the surviving Sun 

Shall smile on your decay — oh, ask not me 
To love you till your little race is run ; 

I cannot die as ye must — Over me [dwell 

Your leaves shall glance — the streams in which ye 
Shall be my paths henceforth ; and so farewell ! " 

She spoke and wept. The dark and azure well 
Sparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears, 

And every little circlet where they fell 

Flung to the cavern roof inconstant spheres 

And intertangled lines of light. A knell 
Of sobbing voices came upon her ears 

From those departing forms, o'er the serene 

Of the white streams and of the forest green. 

All day the Wizard Lady sat aloof ; 

Spelling out scrolls of dread antiquity 
Under the cavern's fountain-lighted roof J 

Or broidering the pictured poesy 



i4o THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



Of some high tale upon her growing woof, [dye 

Which the sweet splendour of her smiles could 
In hues outshining heaven— and ever she 
Added some grace to the wrought poesy — 

27. While on her hearth lay blazing many a piece 

Of sandal wood, rare gums, and cinnamon. 
Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is ; 

Each flame of it is as a precious stone 
Dissolved in ever-moving light, and this 

Belongs to each and all who gaze thereon. 
The Witch beheld it not, for in her hand 
She held a woof that dimmed the burning brand. 

28. This Lady never slept, but lay in trance 

All night within the fountain — as in sleep. 
Its emerald crags glowed in her beauty's glance : 

Through the green splendour of the water deep 
She saw the constellations reel and dance 

Like fire-flies — and withal did ever keep 
The tenor of her contemplations calm, 
With open eyes, closed feet, and folded palm. 

29. And, when the whirlwinds and the clouds descended 

From the white pinnacles of that cold hill, 
She passed at dewfall to a space extended, 

Where in a lawn of flowering asphodel 
Amid a wood of pines and cedars blended, 

There yawned an inextinguishable well 
Of crimson fire, full even to the brim, 
And overflowing all the margin trim — 

30. Within the which she lay when the fierce war 

Of wintry winds shook that innocuous liquor, 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. iai 



In many a mimic moon and bearded star, [flicker 
O'er woods and lawns. The serpent heard it 

In sleep, and, dreaming still, he crept afar. 

And, when the windless snow descended thicker 

Than autumn leaves, she watched it as it came 

Melt on the surface of the level flame. 

She had a boat which some say Vulcan wrought 
For Venus, as the chariot of her star ; 

But it was found too feeble to be fraught 
With all the ardours in that sphere which are, 

And so she sold it, and Apollo bought 
And gave it to this daughter : from a car, 

Changed to the fairest and the lightest boat 

Which ever upon mortal stream did float. 

And others say that, when but three hours old, 
The firstborn Love out of his cradle leapt, 

And clove dun chaos with his wings of gold, 
And, like a horticultural adept, 

Stole a strange seed, and wrapped it up in mould, 
And sowed it in his mother's star, and kept 

Watering it all the summer with sweet dew, 

And with his wings fanning it as it grew. 

The plant grew strong and green — the snowy flower 
Fell, and the long and gourd-like fruit began 

To turn the light and dew by inward power 
To its own substance : woven tracery ran 

Of light firm texture, ribbed and branching, o'er 
The solid rind, like a leafs veined fan — 

Of which Love scooped this boat, and with soft 
motion 

Piloted it round the circumfluous ocean. 



142 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



34. This boat she moored upon her fount, and lit 

A living spirit within all its frame, 
Breathing the soul of swiftness into it. 

Couched on the fountain — like a panther tame 
(One of the twain at Evan's feet that sit), 

Or as on Vesta's sceptre a swift flame, 
Or on blind Homer's heart a winged thought — 
In joyous expectation lay the boat. 

35. Then by strange art she kneaded fire and snow 

Together, tempering the repugnant mass 
With liquid love — all things together grow 

Through which the harmony of love can pass ; 
And a fair Shape out of her hands did flow — 

A living image which did far surpass 
In beauty that bright shape of vital stone 
Which drew the heart out of Pygmalion. 

36. A sexless thing it was, and in its growth 

It seemed to have developed no defect 
Of either sex, yet all the grace of both. 

In gentleness and strength its limbs were decked ; 
The bosom lightly swelled with its full youth ; 

The countenance was such as might select 
Some artist that his skill should never die, 
Imaging forth such perfect purity. 

37. From its smooth shoulders hung two rapid wings 

Fit to have borne it to the seventh sphere, 
Tipped with the speed of liquid lightnings, 

Dyed in the ardours of the atmosphere. 
She led her creature to the boiling springs 

Where the light boat was moored, and said ' ' Sit 
here," 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 143 



And pointed to the prow, and took her seat 
Beside the rudder with opposing feet. 

38. And down the streams which clove those mountains 

vast, 

Around their inland islets, and amid 
The panther-peopled forests (whose shade cast 

Darkness and odours, and a pleasure hid 
In melancholy gloom) the pinnace passed ; 

By many a star-surrounded pyramid 
Of icy crag cleaving the purple sky, 
And caverns yawning round unfathomably. 

39. The silver noon into that winding dell, 

With slanted gleam athwart the forest tops, 
Tempered like golden evening, feebly fell ; 

A green and glowing light, like that which drops 
From folded lilies in which glow-worms dwell, 

When Earth over her face Night's mantle wraps ; 
Between the severed mountains lay on high, 
Over the stream, a narrow rift of sky. 

40. And, ever as she went, the Image lay 

With folded wings and unawakened eyes ; 
And o'er its gentle countenance did play 

The busy dreams, as thick as summer flies, 
Chasing the rapid smiles that would not stay, 

And drinking the warm tears, and the sweet sighs 
Inhaling, which with busy murmur vain 
They had aroused from that full heart and brain. 

41. And ever down the prone vale, like a cloud 

Upon a stream of wind, the pinnace went : 



144 THE WITCH OF ATLAS, 



Now lingering on the pools, in which abode 
The calm and darkness of the deep content 

In which they paused ; now o'er the shallow road 
Of white and dancing waters, all besprent 

With sand and polished pebbles — mortal boat 

In such a shallow rapid could not float. 

42. And down the earthquaking cataracts, which shiver 

Their snow-like waters into golden air, 
Or under chasms unfathomable ever 

Sepulchre them, till in their rage they tear 
A subterranean portal for the river, 

It fled. The circling sunbows did upbear 
Its fall down the hoar precipice of spray, 
Lighting it far upon its lampless way. 

43. And, when the Wizard Lady would ascend 

The labyrinths of some many-winding vale 
Which to the inmost mountain upward tend, 

She called " Hermaphroditus ! " — and the pale 
And heavy hue which slumber could extend 

Over its lips and eyes, as on the gale 
A rapid shadow from a slope of grass, 
Into the darkness of the stream did pass. 

44. And it unfurled its heaven-coloured pinions ; 

With stars of fire spotting the stream below, 
And from above into the Sun's dominions 

Flinging a glory like the golden glow 
In which Spring clothes her emerald- winged 
minions, 

All interwoven with fine feathery snow, 
And moonlight splendour of intensest rime 
With which frost paints the pines in winter time. 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 145 



45. And then it winnowed the elysian air 

"Which ever hung about that Lady bright, 
With its ethereal vans : and, speeding there, 

Like a star up the torrent of the night, 
Or a swift eagle in the morning glare 

Breasting the whirlwind with impetuous flight, 
The pinnace, oared by those enchanted wings, 
Clove the fierce streams towards their upper springs. 

46. The water flashed — like sunlight, by the prow 

Of a noon-wandering meteor flung to heaven ; 
The still air seemed as if its waves did flow 

In tempest down the mountains ; loosely driven, 
The Lady's radiant hair streamed to and fro ; 

Beneath, the billows, having vainly striven 
Indignant and impetuous, roared to feel 
The swift and steady motion of the keel. 

47. Or, when the weary moon was in the wane. 

Or in the noon of interlunar night, 
The Lady Witch in visions could not chain 

Her spirit ; but sailed forth under the light 
Of shooting stars, and bade extend amain 

His storm-outspeeding wings the Hermaphrodite ; 
She to the austral waters took her way. 
Beyond the fabulous Thamondocana. 

48. Where, like a meadow which no scythe has shaven, 

Which rain could never bend or whirlblast shake, 
With the antarctic constellations paven, 

Canopus and his crew, lay the austral lake — 
There she would build herself a windless haven, 

Out of the clouds whose moving turrets make 



146 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



The bastions of the storm, when through the sky 
The spirits of the tempest thundered by — 

49. A haven beneath whose translucent floor 

The tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably ; 
And around which the solid vapours hoar, 

Based on the level waters, to the sky 
Lifted their dreadful crags, and, like a shore 

Of wintry mountains, inaccessibly 
Hemmed in with rifts and precipices grey, 
And hanging crags, many a cove and bay, 

50. And, whilst the outer lake beneath the lash 

Of the wind's scourge foamed like a wounded 
thing, 
And the incessant hail with stony clash 

Ploughed up. the waters, and the flagging wing 
Of the roused cormorant in the lightning flash 

Looked like the wreck of some wind- wandering 
Fragment of inky thunder-smoke — this haven 
"Was as a gem to copy heaven engraven. 

51. On which that Lady played her many pranks, 

Circling the image of a shooting star 
(Even as a tiger on Hydaspes' banks 

Outspeeds the antelopes which speediest are) 
In her light boat ; and many quips and cranks 

She played upon the water ; till the car 
Of the late moon, like a sick matron wan, 
To journey from the misty east began. 

52. And then she called out of the hollow turrets 

Of those high clouds, white, golden, and ver- 
milion, 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 147 



The armies of her ministering spirits. 

In mighty legions million after million 
They came, each troop emblazoning its merits 

On meteor flags ; and many a proud pavilion 
Of the intertexture of the atmosphere 
They pitched upon the plain of the calm mere. 

53. They framed the imperial tent of their great Queen 

Of woven exhalations, underlaid 
"With lambent lightning-fire, as may be seen 

A dome of thin and open ivory inlaid 
With crimson silk. Cressets from the serene 

Hung there, and on the water for her tread 
A tapestry of fleece-like mist was strewn, 
Dyed, in the beams of the ascending moon. 

54. And on a throne o'erlaid with starlight, caught 

Upon those wandering isles of aery dew 
"Which highest shoals of mountain shipwreck not, 

She sate, and heard all that had happened new 
Between the earth and moon since they had brought 

The last intelligence ; and now she grew 
Pale as that moon lost in the watery night, 
And now she wept, and now she laughed outright. 

55. These were tame pleasures. — She would often climb 

The steepest ladder of the crudded rack 
Up to some beaked cape of cloud sublime, 

And like Arion on the dolphin's back 
Ride singing through the shoreless air. Oft-time, 

Following the serpent lightning's winding track, 
She ran upon the platforms of the wind, 
And laughed to hear the fireballs roar behind. 



1 48 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



5ri. And sometimes to those streams of upper air 
"Which whirl the earth in its diurnal round 

She would ascend, and win the Spirits there 
To let her join their chorus. Mortals found 

That on those days the sky was calm and fair, 
And mystic snatches of harmonious sound 

Wandered upon the earth where'er she passed, 

And happy thoughts of hope, too sweet to last. 

57. But her choice sport was, in the hours of sleep, 

To glide adown old Nilus, when he threads 
Egypt and Ethiopia from the steep 

Of utmost Axume until he spreads, 
Like a calm flock of silver-fleeced sheep, 

His waters on the plain — and crested heads 
Of cities and proud temples gleam amid, 
And many a vapour-belted pyramid — 

58. By Moeris and the Mareotid lakes, 

Strewn with faint blooms like bridal-chamber 
floors, 
Where naked boys bridling tame water-snakes, 

Or charioteering ghastly alligators, 
Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes 

Of those huge forms ; within the brazen doors 
Of the Great Labyrinth slept both boy and beast, 

Tired with the pomp of their Osirian feast. 

59. And where within the surface of the river 

The shadows of the massy temples lie, 
And never are erased, but tremble ever 

Like things which every cloud can doom to die — 
Through lotus-paven canals, and wheresoever 

The works of man pierced that serenest sky 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 149 



"With tombs, and towers, and fanes — 'twas her 
To wander in the shadow of the night. [delight 

60. With motion like the spirit of that wind 

Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet 
Passed through the peopled haunts of humankind, 

Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet — 
Through fane and palace-court and labyrinth mined 

With many a dark and subterranean street 
Under the Nile ; through chambers high and deep 
She passed, observing mortals in their sleep. 

61. A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see 

Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep. 
Here lay two sister-twins in infancy ; 

There a lone youth who in his dreams did weep ; 
Within, two lovers linked innocently 

In their loose locks which over both did creep 
Like ivy from one stem ; and there lay calm 
Old age with snow-bright hair and folded palm. 

62. But other troubled forms of sleep she saw, 

Not to be mirrored in a holy song — 
Distortions foul of supernatural awe, 

And pale imaginings of visioned wrong, 
And all the code of Custom's lawless law 

Written upon the brows of old and young. 
11 This," said the Wizard Maiden, " is the strife 
Which stirs the liquid surface of man's life." 

53. And little did the light disturb her soul. 

We, the weak mariners of that wild lake, 
Where'er its shores extend or billows roll, 
Our course unpiloted and starless make 



iw THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



O'er its wild surface to an unknown goal ; 

But she in the calm depths her way could take, 
Where in bright bowers immortal forms abide 
Beneath the weltering of the restless tide. 

64. And she saw princes couched under the glow 

Of sunlike gems ; and round each temple-court 
In dormitories ranged, row after row, 

She saw the priests asleep — all of one sort, 
For all were educated to be so. 

The peasants in their huts, and in the port 
The sailors she saw cradled on the waves, 
And the dead lulled within their dreamless graves. 

65. And all the forms in which those spirits lay- 

Were to her s l ght like the diaphanous 
Veils in which sihose sweet ladies oft array 

Their delicrie limbs who would conceal from us 
Only their scorn of all concealment : they 

Move in the light of their own beauty thus. 
But these and all now lay with sleep upon them, 
And little thought a Witch was looking on them. 

66. She all those human figures breathing there 

Beheld as living spirits. To her eyes 
The naked beauty of the soul lay bare, 

And often through a rude and worn disguise 
She saw the inner form most bright and fair : 

And then she had a charm of strange device, 
Which, murmured on mute lips with tender tone, 
Could make that spirit mingle with her own. 

67. Alas ! Aurora, what wouldst thou have given 

For such a charm, when Tithon became grey — 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 151 



Or how much, Venus, of thy silver heaven 
Wouldst thou have yielded, ere Proserpina 

Had half (oh ! why not all ?) the debt forgiven 
Which dear Adonis had been doomed to pay — 

To any witch who would have taught you it ? 

The Heliad doth not know its value yet. 

68. 'Tis said in after times her spirit free 

Knew what love was, and felt itself alone : 
But holy Dian could not chaster be 

Before she stooped to kiss Endymion 
Than now this Lady. Like a sexless bee, 

Tasting all blossoms and confined to none, 
Among those mortal forms the Wizard Maiden 
Passed with an eye serene and heart unladen. 

69. To those she saw most beautiful she gave 

Strange panacea in a crystal bowl. 
They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave, 

And lived thenceforward as if some control, 
Mightier than life, were in them ; and the grave 

Of such, when death oppressed the weary soul, 
Was as a green and overarching bower 
Lit by the gems of many a starry flower. 

70. For, on the night that they were buried, she 

Restored the embalmer's ruining, and shook 
The light out of the funeral lamps, to be 

A mimic day within that deathy nook ; 
And she unwound the woven imagery 

Of second childhood's swaddling bands, and took 
The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche, 
And threw it with contempt into a ditch. 



152 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 



71. And there the body lay, age after age, 

Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying, 
Like one asleep in a green hermitage — 

With gentle sleep about its eyelids playing, 
And living in its dreams beyond the rage 

Of death or life ; while they were still arraying 
In liveries ever new the rapid, blind, 
And lleeting generations of mankind. 

72. And she would write strange dreams upon the brain 

Of those who were less beautiful, and make 
All harsh and crooked purposes more vain 

Than in the desert is the serpent's wake 
Which the sand covers. All his evil gain 

The miser, in such dreams, would rise and shake 
Into a beggar's lap ; the lying scribe 
Would his own lies betray without a bribe. 

73. The priests would write an explanation full, 

Translating hieroglyphics into Greek, 
How the god Apis really was a bull, 

And nothing more ; and bid the herald stick 
The same against the temple doors, and pull 

The old cant down : they licensed all to speak 
Whate'er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese, 
By pastoral letters to each diocese. 

74. The king would dress an ape up in his crown 

And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat, 
And on the right hand of the sunlike throne 

Would place a gaudy mockbird to repeat 
The chatterings of the monkey. Every one 

Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet 
Of their great emperor when the morning came ; 
And kissed — alas, how many kiss the same ! 



THE WITCH OF ATLAS. 153 



75. The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and 

Walked out of quarters in somnambulism ; 
Round the red anvils you might see them stand 

Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm, 
Beating their swords to ploughshares : in a band 

The gaolers sent those of the liberal schism 
Free through the streets of Memphis — much, I wis. 
To the annoyance of king Amasis. 

76. And timid lovers, who had been so coy 

They hardly knew whether they loved or not, 
Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy, 

To the fulfilment of their inmost thought ; 
And, when next day the maiden and the boy 

Met one another, both, like sinners caught, 
Blushed at the thing which each believed was done 
Only in fancy — till the tenth moon shone ; 

77. And then the Witch would let them take no ill : 

Of many thousand schemes which lovers find, 
The Witch found one — and so they took their fill 

Of happiness in marriage warm and kind. 
Friends who, by practice of some envious skill, 

Were torn apart (a wide wound, mind from mind) 
She did unite again with visions clear 
Of deep affection and of truth sincere. 

78. These were the pranks she played among the cities 
• 1 Of mortal men. And what she did to sprites 

And gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties, 
To do her will, and show their subtle sleights, 

I will declare another time ; for it is 
A tale more fit for the weird winter nights 

Than for these garish summer days, when we 

Scarcely believe much more than we can see. 



POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819. 



THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY. 

1. A SI lay asleep in Italy, 

Jt\. There came a voice from over the sea, 
And with great power it forth led me 
To walk in the visions of Poesy. 

2. I met Murder on the way — 

He had a mask like Castlereagh. 
Very smooth he looked, yet grim ; 
Seven bloodhounds followed him. 

3. All were fat ; and well they might 
Be in admirable plight, 

For one by one, and two by two, 

He tossed them human hearts to chew, 

Which from his wide cloak he drew. 



4. Next came Fraud, and he had on, 
Like Lord Eldon, an ermine gown. 
His big tears, for he wept well, 
Turned into millstones as they fell ; 



MASQUE OF ANARCHY. 155 



5. And the little children who 
Round his feet played to and fro, 
Thinking every tear a gem, 

Had their brains knocked out by them. 

6. Clothed with the Bible, as with light 
And the shadows of the night, 

Like Sidmouth next, Hypocrisy 
On a crocodile came by. 

7. And many more Destructions played 
In this ghastly masquerade — 

All disguised, even to the eyes, 
Like bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies. 

8. Last came Anarchy ; he rode 

On a white horse splashed with blood ; 
He was pale even to the lips, 
Like Death in the Apocalypse. 

9. And he wore a kingly crown ; 
In his hand a sceptre shone ; 
On his brow this mark I saw — 
"lam God, and King, and Law ! " 

10. With a pace stately and fast 
Over English land he passed, 
Trampling to a mire of blood 
The adoring multitude. 

11. And a mighty troop around 

With their trampling shook the ground, 
Waving each a bloody sword 
For the service of their lord. 



156 MASQUE OF ANARCHY. 



12. And with glorious triumph they 
Rode through England, proud and gay, 
Drunk as with intoxication 

Of the wine of desolation. 

13. O'er fields and towns, from sea to sea, 
Passed the pageant swift and free, 
Tearing up and trampling down, 
Till they came to London town. 

14. And each dweller panic-stricken, 
Felt his heart with terror sicken, 
Hearing the tempestuous cry 

Of the triumph of Anarchy. 

15. For with pomp to meet him came, 
Clothed in arms like blood and flame, 
The hired murderers who did sing, 

11 Thou art God, and Law, and King ! 

16. " We have waited, weak and lone, 
For thy coming, Mighty One ! 

Our purses are empty, our swords are cold ; 
Give us glory, and blood, and gold." 

17. Lawyers and priests, a motley crowd, 
To the earth their pale brows bowed — 
Like a bad prayer not over loud, 
Whispering " Thou art Law and God ! " 

18. Then all cried with one accord, 

" Thou art King, and Law, and Lord ; 

Anarchy, to thee we bow, 

Be thy name made holy now ! " 



MASQUE OF ANARCHY. 157 



19. And Anarchy the skeleton 
Bowed and grinned to every one 
As well as if his education 

Had cost ten millions to the nation. 

20. For he knew the palaces 

Of our kings were nightly his ; 
His the sceptre, crown, and globe, 
And the gold-inwoven robe. 

21. So he sent his slaves before 

To seize upon the Bank and Tower, 
And was proceeding with intent 
To meet his pensioned parliament, 

22. When one fled past, a maniac maid, 
And her name was Hope, she said, 
But she looked more like Despair ; 
And she cried out in the air : 

23. " My father Time is weak and grey 
With waiting for a better day ; 
See how idiot-like he stands, 
Fumbling with his palsied hands ! 

24. " He has had child after child, 
And the dust of death is piled 
Over every one but me — 
Misery ! oh Misery ! " 

25. Then she lay down in the street 
Right before the horses' feet, 
Expecting with a patient eye 
Murder, Fraud, and Anarchy — 



158 MASQUE OF ANARCHY. 



26. When between her and her foes 
A mist, a light, an image rose, 
Small at first, and weak and frail, 
Like the vapour of the gale : 

27. Till, as clouds grow on the blast, 

Like tower-crowned giants striding fast, 
And glare with lightnings as they fly, 
And speak in thunder to the sky, 

28. It grew — a shape arrayed in mail 
Brighter than the viper's scale, 
And upborne on wings whose grain 
Was like the light of sunny rain. 

29. On its helm seen far away 

A planet like the morning's lay ; 

And those plumes its light rained through, 

Like a shower of crimson dew. 

30. "With step as soft as wind it passed 
O'er the heads of men : so fast 
That they knew the presence there, 
And looked — and all was empty air. 

31. As flowers beneath May's footsteps waken, 
As stars from Night's loose hair are shaken, 
As waves arise when loud winds call, 
Thoughts sprung where'er that step did fall. 

32. And the prostrate multitude 
Looked — and, ankle-deep in blood, 
Hope, that maiden most serene, 
Was walking with a quiet mien j 



MASQUE OF ANARCHY, 159 



33. And Anarchy, the ghastly birth, 
Lay dead earth upon the earth ; 

The horse of Death, tameless as wind, 

Fled, and with his hoofs did grind 

To dugt the murderers thronged behind. 

34. A rushing light of clouds and splendour, 
A sense awakening and yet tender, 
"Was heard and felt — and at its close 
These words of joy and fear arose ; 

35. As if their own indignant Earth, 
Which gave the sons of England birth, 
Had felt their blood upon her brow, 
And, shuddering with a mother's throe, 

36. Had turned every drop of blood 

By which her face had been bedewed 

To an accent unwithstood, 

As if her heart had cried aloud. 

37. " Men of England, heirs of glory, 
Heroes of unwritten story, 
Nurslings of one mighty mother, 
Hopes of her and one another ! 

38. " Rise, like lions after slumber, 
In unvanquishable number ! 
Shake your chains to earth, like dew 
Which in sleep had fallen on you 1 

39. " What is freedom ? Ye can tell 
That which Slavery is too well, 
For its very name has grown 

To an echo of you own. 



i6o MASQUE OF ANARCHY. 



40. " 'Tis to work, and have such pay 
As just keeps life from day to day 
In your limbs as in a cell 

For the tyrants' use to dwell : 

41. " So that ye for them are made 

Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade; 
With or without your own will, bent 
To their defence and nourishment. 

42. " 'Tis to see your children weak 
"With their mothers pine and peak 
When the winter winds are bleak— 
They are dying whilst I speak. 

43. " 'Tis to hunger for such diet 
As the rich man in his riot 
Casts to the fat dogs that lie 
Surfeiting beneath his eye. 

44. " 'Tis to let the ghost of Gold 
Take from toil a thousandfold 
More than e'er his substance could 
In the tyrannies of old : 

45. " Paper coin — that forgery 
Of the title-deeds which ye 
Hold to something of the worth 
Of the inheritance of Earth. 

46. " 'Tis to be a slave in soul, 
And to hold no strong control 
Over your own wills, but be 
All that others make of ye. 



MASQUE OF ANARCHY. 161 



47. "And, at length, when ye complain 
With a murmur weak and vain, 
Tis to see the tyrant's crew 

Ride over your wives and you — 
Blood is on the grass like dew ! 

48. " Then it is to feel revenge, 
Fiercely thirsting to exchange 

Blood for blood, and wrong for wrong : 
Do not thus when ye are strong ! 

49. "Birds find rest in narrow nest, 
When weary of their winged quest ; 
Beasts find fare in woody lair, 
When storm and snow are in the air ; 

50. " Horses, oxen, have a home 
When from daily toil they come ; 
Household dogs, when the wind roars, 
Find a home within warm doors ; 

51. "Asses, swine, have litter spread, 
And with fitting food are fed ; 
All things have a home but one — 
Thou, Englishman, hast none ! 

52. "This is Slavery ! — Savage men, 
Or wild beasts within a den, 
Would endure not as ye do : 
But such ills they never knew. 

53. "What art thou, Freedom? Oh ! could slave9 
Answer from their living graves 

This demand, tyrants would flee 
Like a dream's dim imagery. 

*L 



1 62 MASQUE OF ANARCHY. 



54. "Thou art not, as impostors say, 
A shadow soon to pass away, 

A superstition, and a name 
Echoing from the cave of Fame. 

55. " For the labourer, thou art bread 
And a comely table spread, 
From his daily labour come, 

In a neat and happy home. 

56. " Thou art clothes and fire and food 
For the trampled multitude. 

No — in countries that are free 
Such starvation cannot be 
As in England now we see ! 

57. ' ' To the rich thou art a check ; 
When his foot is on the neck 
Of his victim, thou dost make 
That he treads upon a snake. 

58. " Thou art justice : ne'er for gold 
May thy righteous laws be sold 
As laws are in England ; thou 
Shield'st alike the high and low. 

59. "Thou art wisdom: freemen never 
Dream that God will damn for ever 
All who think those things untrue 
Of which priests make such ado. 

60. " Thou art peace : never by thee 
"Would blood and treasure wasted be 
As tyrants wasted them when all 
Leagued to quench thy flame in Gaul. 



MASQUE OF ANARCHY^ 163 



61. " What if English toil and blood 
"Was poured forth even as a flood ? 
It availed, Liberty, 

To dim — but not extinguish thee. 

62. ' ' Thou art love : the rich have kissed 
Thy feet, and, like him following Christ, 
Given their substance to the free, 

And through the rough world followed thee. 

63. "Oh ! turn their wealth to arms, and make 
War, for thy beloved sake, 

On wealth and war and fraud ; whence they 
Drew the power which is their prey. 

64. " Science, and poetry, and thought, 
Are thy lamps ; they make the lot 
Of the dwellers in a cot 

Such they curse their Maker not. 

65. "Spirit, patience, gentleness, 
All that can adorn and bless, 

Art thou. Let deeds, not words, express 
Thine exceeding loveliness. 

Q6. "Let a great assembly be 
Of the fearless and the free 
On some spot of English ground 
Where the plains stretch wide around. 

67. " Let the blue sky overhead, 

The green earth on which ye tread, 
All that must eternal be 
Witness the solemnity. 



64 MASQUE OF ANARCHY. 



68. " From the corners uttermost 
Of the bounds of English coast ; 
From every hut, village, and town 
"Where those who live and suffer moan 
For others' misery or their own ; 

69. "From the workhouse and the prison, 
Where, pale as corpses newly risen, 
Women, children, young and old, 
Groan for pain, and weep for cold ; 

70. " From the haunts of daily life 
Where is waged the daily strife 

With common wants and common cares 
Which sow the human heart with tares : 

71. "Lastly, from the palaces 
Where the murmur of distress 
Echoes like the distant sound 
Of a wind alive around — 

72. " Those prison-halls of wealth and fashion, 
Where some few feel such compassion, 
For those who groan, and toil, and wail, 
As must make their brethren pale — 

73. "Ye who suffer woes untold 
Or to feel or to behold 

Your lost country bought and sold 
With a price of blood and gold ! 

74. " Let a vast assembly be, 
And with great solemnity 

Declare with ne'er-said words that ye 
Are, as God has made ye, free ! 



MASQUE OF ANARCHY. 165 



75. " Be your strong and simple words 
Keen to wound as sharpened swords, 
And wide as targes let them be, 
With their shade to cover ye. 

76. "Let the tyrants pour around 
With a quick and startling sound, 
Like the loosening of a sea, 
Troops of armed emblazonry. 

77. " Let the charged artillery drive, 
Till the dead air seems alive 
With the clash of clanging wheels, 
And the tramp of horses' heels. 

78. " Let the fixed bayonet 
Gleam with sharp desire to wet 
Its bright point in English blood, 
Looking keen as one for food. 

79. " Let the horsemen's scimitars 
Wheel and flash, like sphereless stars 
Thirsting to eclipse their burning 

In a sea of death and mourning. 

80. " Stand ye calm and resolute, 
Like a forest close and mute, 

With folded arms, and looks which are 
Weapons of an unvanquished war. 

81. " And let Panic, who outspeeds 
The career of armed steeds, 
Pass, a disregarded shade, 
Through your phalanx undismayed. 



1 66 MASQUE OF ANARCHY. 



82. " Let the laws of your own land, 
Good or ill, between ye stand, 
Hand to hand, and foot to foot, 
Arbiters of the dispute — 

83. "The old laws of England— they 
Whose reverend heads with age are grey, 
Children of a wiser day ; 

And whose solemn voice must be 
Thine own echo — Liberty ! 

84. "On those who first should violate 
Such sacred heralds in their state 
Rest the blood that must ensue ; 
And it will not rest on you. 

85. " And, if then the tyrants dare, 
Let them ride among you there, 
Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew : 
What they like, that let them do. 

86. " With folded arms and steady eyes, 
And little fear and less surprise, 
Look upon them as they slay, 

Till their rage has died away. 

87. " Then they will return with shame. 
To the place from which they cam%, 
And the blood thus shed will speak 
In hot blushes on their cheek. 

88. ' ' Every woman in the land 

Will point at them as they stand— 
They will hardly dare to greet 
Their acquaintance in the street : 



LINES. 167 



89. " And the bold true warriors 

Who have hugged danger in the wars 
Will turn to those who would be free, 
Ashamed of such base company : 

90. " And that slaughter to the nation 
Shall steam up like inspiration, 
Eloquent, oracular, 

A volcano heard afar : 

91. " And these words shall then become 
Like Oppression's thundered doom, 
Ringing through each heart and brain, 
Heard again— again — again ! 

92. " Rise, like lions after slumber, 
In unvanquishable number ! 
Shake your chains to earth, like dew 
Which in sleep had fallen on you 1 
Ye are many — they are few ! " 



LINES. 

WRITTEN DURING THE CASTLEREAGH ADMINISTRATION. 

1. i^ORPSES are cold in the tomb ; 

K^s Stones on the pavement are dumb ; 
Abortions are dead in the womb, 
And their mothers look pale — like the white shore 
Of Albion, free no more. 



168 TO THE MEN OF ENGLAND. 



2. Her sons are as stones in the way — 
They are masses of senseless clay — 
They are trodden, and move not away ; 

The abortion with which she travaileth 
Is Liberty, smitten to death. 

3. Than trample and dance, thou oppressor, 
For thy victim is no redressor ! 

Thou art sole lord and possessor 
Of her corpses, and clods, and abortions — they pave 
Thy path to the grave. 

4. Hear'st thou the festival din 

Of Death, and Destruction, and Sin, 
And Wealth crying " Havoc ! " within ? 
'Tis the bacchanal triumph which makes Truth dumb, 
Thine epithalamium. 

5. Ay, marry thy ghastly Wife ! 
Let Fear, and Disquiet, and Strife 
Spread thy couch in the chamber of Life ! 

Marry Ruin, thou tyrant ! and God be thy guide 
To the bed of the bride ! 



SONG— TO THE MEN OF ENGLAND. 

1. TV /TEN of England, wherefore plough 
1VX For the lords who lay you low ? 
Wherefore weave with toil and care 
The rich robes your tyrants wear ? 



TO THE MEN OF ENGLAND. 169 



% Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save, 
From the cradle to the grave, 
Those ungrateful drones who would 
Drain your sweat — nay, drink your blood ? 

3. Wherefore, Bees of England, forge 
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge, 
That these stingless drones may spoil 
The forced produce of your toil ? 

4. Have ye leisure, comfort, calm, 
Shelter, food, love's gentle balm ? 
Or what is it ye buy so dear 

With your pain and with your fear ? 

5. The seed ye sow another reaps ; 
The wealth ye find another keeps ; 
The robes ye weave another wears ; 
The arms ye forge another bears. 

6. Sow seed — but let no tyrant reap ; 
Find wealth — let no impostor heap ; 
Weave robes — let not the idle wear ; 
Forge arms, in your defence to bear. 

7. Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells ; 
In halls ye deck another dwells. 

Why shake the chains ye wrought ? Ye see 
The steel ye tempered glance on ye. 

8. With plough, and spade, and hoe, and loom, 
Trace your grave, and build your tomb, 
And weave your winding-sheet, till fair 
England be your sepulchre ! 



i7o ENGLAND IN 1819. 



ENGLAND IN 1819. 

AN old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king — 
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow 
Through public scorn, mud from a muddy spring, 

Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, 
But leech-like to their fainting country cling, 

Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow — 
A people starved and stabbed in the unfilled field — 

An army which liberticide and prey 
Make as a two-edged sword to all who wield — 

Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay — 
Religion Christless, Godless, a book sealed — 
A senate — time's worst statute unrepealed — 

Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may 

Burst to illumine our tempestuous day. 



SIMILES FOR TWO POLITICAL CHARACTERS 
OF 1819. 

1. AS from an ancestral oak 

x\ Two empty ravens sound their clarion, 
Yell by yell and croak by croak, 
When they scent the noonday smoke 
Of fresh human carrion : — 

2. As two gibbering night-birds flit 

From their bowers of deadly hue 
Through the night to frighten it, 
When the moon is in a fit, 

And the stars are none or few — 



GOD SAVE THE QUEEN. 171 



3. As a shark and dogfish wait 

Under an Atlantic isle 
For the negro-ship whose freight 
Is the theme of their debate, 

Wrinkling their red gills the while — 

4. Are ye, two vultures sick for battle, 

Two scorpions under one wet stone, 
Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle, 
Two crows perched on the murrained cattle, 

Two vipers tangled into one. 



GOD SAVE THE QUEEN. 

1. /""* OD prosper, speed, and save, 
VJT God raise from England's grave, 

Her murdered Queen ! 
Pave with swift victory 
The steps of Liberty, 
Whom Britons own to be 

Immortal Queen ! 

2. See, she comes throned on high 
On swift Eternity ! 

God save the Queen ! 
Millions on millions wait, 
Firm, rapid, and elate, 
On her majestic state — 

God save the Queen 1 



172 GOD SAVE THE QUEEN. 



3. She is Thine own pure soul 
Moulding the mighty whole. 

God save the Queen ! 
She is Thine own deep love 
Rained down from heaven above. 
Wherever she rest or move, 

God save our Queen ! 

4. 'Wilder her enemies 

In their own dark disguise ! 

God save our Queen ! 
All earthly things that dare 
Her sacred name to bear, 
Strip them, as kings are, bare ; 

God save the Queen ! 

5. Be her eternal throne 
Built in our hearts alone — 

God save the Queen ! 
Let the oppressor hold 
Canopied seats of gold ; 
She sits enthroned of old 

O'er our hearts Queen. 

6. Lips touched by seraphim 
Breathe out the choral hymn, 

" God save the Queen ! 
Sweet as if angels sang, 
Loud as that trumpet's clang 
Wakening the world's dead gang — 

God save the Queen 1 



AN ODE. 173 



AN ODE TO THE ASSERTERS OF LIBERTY. 

1. A RISE, arise, arise ! 

}\_ There is blood on the earth that denies ye 
bread ! 
Be your wounds like eyes 
To weep for the dead, the dead, the dead. 
What other grief were it just to pay ? 
Your sons, your wives, your brethren, were they ! 
"Who said they were slain on the battle-day ? 

2. Awaken, awaken, awaken ! 

The slave and the tyrant are twin-born foes. 

Be the cold chains shaken 
To the dust where your kindred repose, repose : 
Their bones in the grave will start and move 
When they hear the voices of those they love 
Most loud in the holy combat above. 



Wave, wave high the banner 
When Freedom is riding to conquest by : 
Though the slaves that fan her 
Be Famine and Toil, giving sigh for sigh. 
And ye who attend her imperial car, 
Lift uot your hands in the banded war, 
But in her defence whose children ye are. 

Glory, glory, glory, 
To those who have greatly suffered and done ! 

Never name in story 
Was greater than that which ye shall have won. 



174 ODE TO HEA VEN. 



Conquerers have conquered their foes alone, 
Whose revenge, pride, and power, they have over- 
thrown : 
Ride ye, more victorious, over your own. 

Bind, bind every brow 
With crownals of violet, ivy, and pine : 

Hide the blood-stains now 
With hues which sweet Nature has made divine — ■ 
Green strength, azure hope, and eternity. 
But let not the pansy among them be ; 
Ye were injured, and that means memory. 



ODE TO HEAYEN. 

Chorus of Spirits. 

first SPIRIT. 

PALACE-ROOF of cloudless nights ! 
Paradise of golden lights ! 
Deep, immeasurable, vast, 

Which art now, and which wert then ! 
Of the present and the past, 

Of the eternal where and when, 
Presence-chamber, temple, home I 
Ever-canopying dome 
Of acts and ages yet to come ! 

Glorious shapes have life in thee — 
Earth, and all earth's company ; 
Living globes which ever throng 
Thy deep chasms and wildernesses ; 



ODE TO HE A VEN. 175 



And green worlds that glide along ; 

And swift stars with flashing tresses 
And icy moons most cold and bright 
And mighty suns beyond the night, 
Atoms of intensest light. 

Even thy name is as a god, 
Heaven ! for thou art the abode 
Of that Power which is the glass 

Wherein man his nature sees. 
Generations as they pass 

"Worship thee with bended knees. 
Their unremaining gods and they 
Like a river roll away ; 
Thou remainest such alway. 

SECOND SPIRIT. 

Thou art but the mind's first chamber, 
Round which its young fancies clamber, 
Like weak insects in a cave 

Lighted up by stalactites ; 
But the portal of the grave — 

Where a world of new delights 
Will make thy best glories seem 
But a dim and noonday gleam 
From the shadow of a dream ! 

THIRD SPIRIT. 

Peace ! the abyss is wreathed with scorn 
At your presumption, atom-born ! 
What is heaven ? and what are ye 

Who its brief expanse inherit ? 
What are suns and spheres which flee 

With the instinct of that Spirit 



176 ODE TO THE WEST WIND. 



Of which ye are but a part ? 
Drops which Nature's mighty heart 
Drives through thinnest veins. Depart 1 

What is heaven ? A globe of dew, 

Filling in the morning new 

Some eyed flower whose young leaves waken 

On an unimagined world — 
Constellated suns unshaken, 

Orbits measureless, are furled 
In that frail and fading sphere, 
With ten millions gathered there, 
To tremble, gleam, and disappear. 



ODE TO THE WEST WIND. 

OWILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's 
being, 
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead 
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, 

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, 
Pestilence- stricken multitudes ! thou 
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed 

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, 

Each like a corpse within its grave, until 
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow 

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill 
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) 
With living hues and odours plain and hill ; 



ODE TO THE WEST WIND. 177 



Wild Spirit which art moving everywhere ; 
Destroyer and preserver ; hear, oh hear ! 

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's com- 
motion, 
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, 
Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean, 

Angels of rain and lightning ! there are spread 
On the blue surface of thine airy surge, 
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge 

Of the horizon to the zenith's height, 
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge 

Of the dying year, to which this closing night 
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, 
Vaulted with all thy congregated might 

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere 

Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst : Oh hear ! 

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams 

The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, 
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, 

Beside a pumice isle in Baise's bay, 
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers 
Quivering within the wave's intenser day, 

All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers 

So sweet the sense faints picturing them ! Thou 
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers 

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below 
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear 
The sapless foliage of the ocean know 

* M 



178 ODE TO THE WEST WIND. 



Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear, 
And tremble and despoil themselves : Oh, hear ! 

4. If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear ; 

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee ; 
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share 

The impulse of thy strength, only less free 
Than thou, uncontrollable ! if even 
I were as in my boyhood, and could be 

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, 
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed 
Scarce seemed a vision — I would ne'er have striven 

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. 
Oh ! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud ! 
I fall upon the thorns of life ! I bleed ! 

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed 
One too like thee — tameless, and swift, and proud. 

5. Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is : 

What if my leaves are falling like its own ? 
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 

Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, 
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, 

My spirit ! Be thou me, impetuous one ! 

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe, 
Like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth ; 

And, by the incantation of this verse, 

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth 

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind ! 
Be through my lips to unawakened earth 

The trumpet of a prophecy ! Wind, 

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind ? 



AN EXHORTA T10N. 179 



AN EXHORTATION. 

CHAMELEONS feed on light and air ; 
Poets food is love and fame. 
If in this wide world of care 

Poets could but find the same 
"With as little toil as they, 

Would they ever change their hue 
As the light chameleons do, 
Suiting it to every ray 

Twenty times a-day ? 

Poets are on this cold earth 

As chameleons might be 
Hidden from their early birth 

In a cave beneath the sea. 
Where light is, chameleons change ; 

Where love is not, poets do. 

Fame is love disguised : if few 
Find either, never think it strange 
That poets range. 

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power 

A poet's free and heavenly mind. 
If bright chameleons should devour 

Any food but beams and wind, 
They would grow as earthly soon 

As their brother lizards are. 

Children of a sunnier star, 
Spirits from beyond the moon, 
Oh ! refuse the boon 1 



[8o THE INDIAN SERENADE. 



THE INDIAN SERENADE. 

I ARISE from dreams of thee 
In the first sweet sleep of night, 
When the winds are breathing low, 
And the stars are shining bright. 
I arise from dreams of thee, 
And a spirit in my feet 

Hath led me — who knows how ? 
To thy chamber window sweet ! 

The wandering airs they faint 
On the dark, the silent stream — 

The champak odours fail 
Like sweet thoughts in a dream ; 

The nightingale's complaint 

It dies upon her heart, 
As I must die on thine, 

Beloved as thou art ! 

Oh, lift me from the grass ! 

I die, I faint, I fail ! 
Let thy love in kisses rain 
On my lips and eyelids pale. 
My cheek is cold and white, alas ! 
My heart beats loud and fast : 
Oil ! press it close to thine again, 
Where it will break at last. 



LINES. 181 



LINES WRITTEN FOR MISS SOPHIA STACEY. 



T 



Of the nymphs of earth or ocean. 
They are robes that fit the wearer — 

Those soft limbs of thine, whose motion 
Ever falls, and shifts, and glances, 
As the life within them dances. 

2. Thy deep eyes, a double planet, 

Gaze the wisest into madness 
With soft clear fire. The winds that fan it 

Are those thoughts of gentle gladness 
Which, like zephyrs on the billow, 
Make thy gentle soul their pillow. 

3. If whatever face thou paintest 

In those eyes grows pale with pleasure, 
If the fainting soul is faintest 

When it hears thy harp's wild measure, 
Wonder not that, when thou speakest, 
Of the weak my heart is weakest, 

4. As dew beneath the wind of morning, 

As the sea which whirlwinds waken, 
As the birds at thunder's warning, 

As aught mute but deeply shaken, 
As one who feels an unseen spirit, 
Is my heart when thine is near it. 

Via Val Fonda, Florence. 



EPIPSYCHIDION: 

Verses addressed to the noble and unfortunate lady 

EMILY VIVIANI, 

Now imprisoned in the convent of St. Anne, Pisa. 



" L'anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e si crea nell' 
intinito un mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro 
e pauroso baratro." — Her own words. 

My song, I fear that thou wilt find but few 
Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning, 

Of such hard matter dost thou entertain ; 
Whence, if by misadventure chance should bring 
Thee to base company (as chance may do), 
Quite unaware of what thou dost contain, 
I prithee comfort thy sweet self again, 
My last delight : tell them that they are dull, 
And bid them own that thou art beautiful. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 

The writer of the following lines died at Florence, as he was 
preparing for a voyage to one of the wildest of the Sporades, 
which he had bought, and where he had fitted up the ruins of 
an old building ; and where it was his hope to have realised a 
scheme of life suited perhaps to that happier and better world 
of which he is now an inhabitant, but hardly practicable in this. 



EPIPS YC HID I ON. 1 83 



His life was singular ; less on account of the romantic vicissi- 
tudes which diversified it than the ideal tinge which it received 
from his own character and feelings. The present poem, like 
the Vita Nova of Dante, is sufficiently intelligible to a certain 
class of readers without a matter-of-fact history of the circum- 
stances to which it relates ; and to a certain other class it must 
ever remain incomprehensible, from a defect of a common organ 
of preception for the ideas of which it treats. Not but that 
"gran vergogna sarebbe a colui che rimasse cosa sotto veste di 
figura di colore rettorico, e dornandato non sapesse denudare le 
sue parole da cotal veste, in guisa che avessero verace intendi- 
mento." 

The present poem appears to have been intended by the 
writer as the dedication to some longer one. The stanza on the 
preceding page is almost a literal translation from Dante's 
famous canzone 

" Voi che intendendo il terzo del movete," etc. 

The presumptuous application of the concluding lines to his own 
composition will raise a smile at the expense of my unfortunate 
friend : be it a smile not of contempt, but pity. 



EPIPSYCHIDION. 

SWEET Spirit, sister of that orphan one 
Whose empire is the name thou weepest on, 
In my heart's temple I suspend to thee 
These votive wreaths of withered memory. 
Fair captive bird, who from thy narrow cage 
Pourest such music that it might assuage 
The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee, 
Were they not deaf to all sweet melody — 
This song shall be thy rose : its petals pale 
Are dead, indeed, my adored nightingale ! 
But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom, 
And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom. 



1 84 EPIPSYCHIDION. 



High spirit-winged heart, who dost for ever 

Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour, 

Till those bright plumes of thought in which arrayed 

It oversoared this low and worldly shade 

Lie shattered, and thy panting wounded breast 

Stains with dear blood its unmaternal nest — 

I weep vain tears : blood would less bitter be, 

Yet poured forth gladlier could it profit thee. 

Seraph of heaven, too gentle to be human, 

Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman 

All that is insupportable in thee 

Of light, and love, and immortality ! 

Sweet benediction in the eternal curse ! 

Veiled glory of this lamp] ess universe ! 

Thou moon beyond the clouds ! thou living form . 

Among the dead ! thou star above the storm ! 

Thou wonder, and tlrbu beauty, and thou terror ! 

Thou harmony of Nature's art ! thou mirror 

In whom, as in the splendour of the sun, 

All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on— 

Ay, even the dim words which obscure thee now 

Flash lightning-like with unaccustomed glow ! 

I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song 

All of its much mortality and wrong 

With those clear drops which start like sacred dew 

From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through, 

Weeping till sorrow becomes ecstasy : 

Then smile on it so that it may not die. 

I never thought before my death to see 
Youth's vision thus made perfect. Emily, 
I love thee — though the world by no thin name 
Will hide that love from its unvalued shame. 



EPIPS YCHIDION. 185 



Would we two had been twins of the same mother ! 
Or that the name my heart lent to another 
Could be a sister's bond for her and thee, 
Blending two beams of one eternity ! 
Yet were one lawful and the other true, 
These names, though dear, could paint not as is due 
How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me ! 
I am not thine — I am a part of thee ! 

Sweep lamp ! my moth-like muse has burnt its wings ; 

Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings, 

Young Love should teach Time, in his own grey style, 

All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile — 

A lovely soul formed to be blessed and bless — 

A well of sealed and sacred happiness, 

"Whose waters like blithe light and music are, 

Vanquishing dissonance and gloom — a star 

"Which moves not in the moving heavens, alone — 

A smile amid dark frowns— a gentle tone 

Amid rude voices — a beloved light — 

A solitude, a refuge, a delight — 

A lute which those whom Love has taught to play 

Make music on to soothe the roughest day, 

And lull fond Grief asleep — a buried treasure — 

A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure — 

A violet-shrouded grave of woe ? — I measure 

The world of fancies seeking one like thee, 

And find — alas ! mine own infirmity. 

She met me, Stranger, upon life's rough way, 

And lured me towards sweet death ; as Night by Day, 

Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift Hope, 

Led into light, life, peace. An antelope 

In the suspended impulse of its lightness 



1 86 EPIPS YCHIDION. 



Were less ethereally light. The brightness 
Of her divinest presence trembles through 
Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew 
Embodied in the windless heaven of June, 
Amid the splendour-winged stars, the moon 
Burns inextinguishably beautiful : 
And from her lips as from a hyacinth full 
Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops, 
Killing the sense with passion, sweet as stops 
Of planetary music heard in trance. 
In her mild lights the starry spirits dance, 
The sunbeams of those wells which ever leap 
Under the lightnings of the soul — too deep 
For the brief fathom-line of thought or sense. 

The glory of her being, issuing thence, 

Stains the dead blank cold air with a warm shade 

Of unentangled intermixture, made, 

By Love, of light and motion ; one intense 

Diffusion, one serene omnipresence, 

"Whose flowing outlines mingle in their flowing, 

Around her cheeks and utmost fingers glowing 

With the unintermitted blood, which there 

Quivers (as in a fleece of snow-like air 

The crimson pulse of living Morn may quiver), 

Continuously prolonged and ending never, 

Till they are lost, and in that beauty furled 

Which penetrates, and clasps, and fills the world ; 

Scarce visible from extreme loveliness. 

Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress, 

And her loose hair ; and, where some heavy tress 

The air of her own speed has disentwined, 

The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind ; 

And in the soul a wild odour is felt, 



EPIPSYCHIDION. 187 



Beyond the sense, like fiery dews that melt 

Into the bosom of a frozen bud. 

See where she stands ! a mortal shape indued 

With love, and life, and light, and deity, 

And motion which may change but cannot die ; 

An image of some bright eternity ; 

A shadow of some golden dream ; a splendour 

Leaving the third sphere pilotless ; a tender 

Reflection of the eternal moon of love 

Under whose motions life's dull billows move ; 

A metaphor of Spring, and youth, and morning 

A vision like incarnate April, warning 

"With smiles and tears Frost the anatomy 

Into his summer grave. 

Ah ! woe is me ! 
What have I dared ? where am I lifted ? how 
Shall I descend, and perish not ? I know 
That love makes all things equal : I have heard 
By mine own heart this joyous truth averred — 
The spirit of the worm beneath the sod, 
In love and worship, blends itself with God. 

Spouse ! sister ! angel ! pilot of the fate 

Whose course has been so starless ! O too late 

Beloved, too soon adored, by me ! 

For in the fields of immortality 

My spirit should at first have worshipped thine, 

A divine presence in a place divine ; 

Or should have moved beside it on this earth, 

A shadow of that substance, from its birth : 

But not as now. — I love thee ; yes, I feel 

That on the fountain of my heart a seal 

Is set, to keep its waters pure and bright 

For thee, since in those tears thou hast delight 



1 88 EPIPS YCHIDION. 



We — are we not formed, as notes of music are, 
For one another, though dissimilar ? 
Such difference without discord as can make 
Those sweetest sounds in which all spirits shake, 
As trembling leaves in a continuous air. 

Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare 

Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wrecked. 

I never was attached to that great sect 

Whose doctrine is that each one should select 

Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, 

And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend 

To cold oblivion ; though it is in the code 

Of modern morals, and the beaten road 

Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread 

Who travel to their home among the dead 

By the broad highway of the world, and so 

With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe, 

The dreariest and the longest journey go. 

True love in this differs from gold and clay, 

That to divide is not to take away. 

Love is like understanding, that grows bright, 

Gazing on many truths ; 'tis like thy light, 

Imagination, which from earth and sky, 

And from the depths of human fantasy, 

As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills 

The universe with glorious beams, and kills 

Error the worm with many a sunlike arrow 

Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow 

The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, 

The life that wears, the spirit that creates, 

One object and one form, and builds thereby 

A sepulchre for its eternity 1 



EPIPS Y CHID I ON. 



Mind from its object differs most in this : 
Evil from good ; misery from happiness ; 
The baser from the nobler ; the impure 
And frail from what is clear and must endure. 
If you divide suffering or dross, you may 
Diminish till it is consumed away ; 
If you divide pleasure, and love, and thought, 
Each part exceeds the whole ; and we know not 
How much, while any yet remains unshared, 
Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared. 
This truth is that deep well whence sages draw 
The unenvied light of hope ; the eternal law 
By which those live to whom this world of life 
Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife 
Tills for the promise of a later birth 
The wilderness of this elysian earth. 

There was a Being whom my spirit oft 

Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft, 

In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn, 

Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn, 

Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves 

Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves 

Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor 

Paved her light steps. On an imagined shore, 

Under the grey beak of some promontory, 

She met me, robed in such exceeding glory 

That I beheld her not. In solitudes 

Her voice came to me through the whispering woods, 

And from the fountains, and the odours deep 

Of flowers, which, like lips murmuring in their sleep 

Of the sweet kisses which had lulled them there, 

Breathed but of her to the enamoured air ; 

And from the breezes whether low or loud, 



190 EPIPSYCHIDION. 



And from the rain of every passing cloud, 
And from the singing of the summer birds, 
And from all sounds, all silence. In the words 
Of antique verse and high romance — in form, 
Sound, colour — in whatever checks that storm 
Which with the shattered present chokes the past — 
And in that best philosophy whose taste 
Makes this cold common hell, our life, a doom 
As glorious as a fiery martyrdom — 
Her Spirit was the harmony of truth. 

Then from the caverns of my dreamy youth 

I sprang, as one sandalled with plumes of fire, 

And towards the lodestar of my own desire 

I flitted, like a dizzy moth whose flight 

Is as a dead leaf's in the owlet light, 

When it would seek in Hesper's setting sphere 

A radiant death, a fiery sepulchre, 

As if it were a lamp of earthly flame. 

But she, whom prayers or tears then could not tame, 

Passed, like a god throned on a winged planet, 

Whose burning plumes to tenfold swiftness fan it, 

Into the dreary cone of our life's shade. 

And, as a man with mighty loss dismayed, 

I would have followed, though the grave between 

Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are unseen : 

When a voice said, " thou of hearts the weakest, 

The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest." 

Then I — "Where?" The world's echo answered, 

"Where?" 
And in that silence and in my despair 
I questioned every tongueless wind that flew 
Over my tower of mourning, if it knew 
Whither 'twas fled, this soul out of my soul ; 



EPIPSYCHIDION. 191 



And murmured names and spells which have control 

Over the sightless tyrants of our fate. 

But neither prayer nor verse could dissipate 

The night which closed on her ; nor uncreate 

That world within this chaos, mine and me, 

Of which she was the veiled divinity — 

The world, I say, of thoughts that worshipped her. 

And therefore I went forth — with hope, and fear, 

And every gentle passion, sick to death, 

Feeding my course with expectation's breath — 

Into the wintry forest of our life ; 

And, struggling through its error with vain strife, 

And stumbling in my weakness and my haste, 

And half bewildered by new forms, I passed, 

Seeking among those untaught foresters 

If I could find one form, resembling hers, 

In which she might have masked herself from me. 

There, one whose voice was venomed melody 

Sate by a well, under blue nightshade bowers. 

The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers ; 

Her touch was as electric poison ; flame 

Out of her looks into my vitals came ; 

And from her living cheeks and bosom flew 

A killing air which pierced like honey-dew 

Into the core of my green heart, and lay 

Upon its leaves — until, as hair grown grey 

O'er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime 

"With ruins of unseasonable time. 

In many mortal forms I rashly sought 
The shadow of that idol of my thought. 
And some were fair — but beauty dies away : 
Others were wise — but honeyed words betray : 
And one was true — oh ! why not true to me % 



192 EPIPSYCHIDION. 



Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee, 

I turned upon my thoughts, and stood at bay, 

Wounded, and weak, and panting ; the cold day 

Trembled for pity of my strife and pain — 

When, like a noonday dawn, there shone again 

Deliverance. One stood on my path who seemed 

As like the glorious shape which I had dreamed 

As is the Moon, whose changes ever run 

Into themselves, to the eternal Sun ; 

The cold chaste Moon, the queen of heaven's bright 

isles, 
Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles — 
That wandering shrine of soft yet icy flame 
Which ever is transformed yet still the same, 
And warms not, but illumines. Young and fair 
As the descended Spirit of that sphere 
She hid me, as the Moon may hide the Night 
From its own darkness, until all was bright 
Between the heaven and earth of my calm mind ; 
And, as a cloud charioted by the wind, 
She led me to a cave in that wild place, 
And sat beside me, with her downward face 
Illumining my slumbers, like the Moon 
Waxing and waning o'er Endymion. 
And I was laid asleep, spirit and limb, 
And all my being became bright or dim 
As the Moon's image in a summer, sea, 
According as she smiled or frowned on me ; 
And there I lay within a chaste cold bed. 
Alas ! I then was nor alive nor dead — 
For at her silver voice came Death and Life, 
Unmindful each of their accustomed strife, 
Masked like twin babes, a sister and a brother, 
The wandering hopes of one abandoned mother : 



EPIPSYCHIDION. 193 



And through the cavern without wings they flew, 
And cried, " Away ! he is not of our crew." 
I wept ; and, though it be a dream, I weep. 

What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep, 

Blotting that Moon whose pale and waning lips 

Then shrank as in the sickness of eclipse ; 

And how my soul was as a lampless sea, 

And who was then its tempest ; and, when she, 

The planet of that hour, was quenched, what frost 

Crept o'er those waters, till from coast to coast 

The moving billows of my being fell 

Into a death of ice, immovable ; 

And then what earthquakes made it gape and split, 

The white Moon smiling all the while on it — 

These words conceal. If not, each word would be 

The key of staunchless tears. Weep not for me ! 

At length, into the obscure forest came 
The vision I had sought through grief and shame. 
Athwart that wintry wilderness of thorns 
Flashed from her motion splendour like the morn's, 
And from her presence life was radiated 
Through the grey earth and branches bare and dead ; 
So that her way was paved and roofed above 
With flowers as soft as thoughts of budding love ; 
And music from her respiration spread 
Like light — all other sounds were penetrated 
By the small, still, sweet spirit of that sound, 
So that the savage winds hung mute around ; 
And odours warm and fresh fell from her hair, 
Dissolving the dull cold in the frore air. 
Soft as an incarnation of the Sun, 
When light is changed to love, this glorious one 
* N 



194 EPIPSYCHIDION. 



Floated into the cavern where I lay, 
And called my spirit ; and the dreaming clay 
Was lifted by the thing that dreamed below 
As smoke by fire, and in her beauty's glow 
I stood, and felt the dawn of my long night 
Was penetrating me with living light. 
I knew it was the Vision veiled from me 
So many years — that it was Emily. 

Twin spheres of light who rule this passive earth, 

This world of love, this me ; and into birth 

Awaken all its fruits and flowers, and dart 

Magnetic might into its central heart ; 

And lift its billows and its mists, and guide 

By everlasting laws each wind and tide 

To its fit cloud and its appointed cave ; 

And lull its storms, each in the craggy grave 

Which was its cradle, luring to faint bowers 

The armies of the rainbow-winged showers ; 

And, as those married lights which from the towers 

Of heaven look forth, and fold the wandering globe 

In liquid sleep and splendour as a robe, 

And all their many-mingled influence blend, 

If equal yet unlike, to one sweet end, 

So ye, bright regents, with alternate sway, 

Govern my sphere of being, night and day — 

Thou, not disdaining even a borrowed might, 

Thou, not eclipsing a remoter light — 

And through the shadow of the seasons three, 

From Spring to Autumn's sere maturity, 

Light it into the winter of the tomb, 

Where it may ripen to a brighter bloom ! — 

Thou too, Comet, beautiful and fierce, 

Who drew'st the heart of this frail universe 



EPIPSYCHIDION. 195 



Towards thine own ; till wrecked in that convulsion, 

Alternating attraction and repulsion, 

Thine went astray, and that was rent in twain ; 

Oh ! float into our azure heaven again ! 

Be there love's folding-star at thy return ! 

The living Sun will feed thee from its urn 

Of golden fire ; the Moon will veil her horn 

In thy last smiles ; adoring Even and Morn 

"Will worship thee with incense of calm breath 

And lights and shadows, as the star of death 

And birth is worshipped by those sisters wild 

Called Hope and Fear. Upon the heart are piled 

Their offerings — of this sacrifice divine 

A world shall be the altar. 

Lady mine, 
Scorn not these flowers of thought, the fading birth 
Which from its heart of hearts that plant puts forth 
Whose fruit, made perfect by thy sunny eyes, 
Will be as of the trees of paradise. 
The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me ! 
To whatsoe'er of dull mortality 
Is mine remain a vestal sister still ; 
To the intense, the deep, the imperishable — 
Not mine, but me — henceforth be thou united, 
Even as a bride, delighting and delighted. 
The hour is come — the destined star has risen 
Which shall descend upon a vacant prison. 
The walls are high, the gates are strong, thick set 
The sentinels — but true Love never yet 
Was thus constrained. It overleaps all fence : 
Like lightning, with invisible violence 
Piercing its continents ; like heaven's free breath, 
Which he who grasps can hold not ; liker Death, 



196 EPIPSYCHIDION. 



Who rides upon a thought, and makes his way 
Through temple, tower, and palace, and the array 
Of arms. More strength has Love than he or they 
For he can burst his charnel, and make free 
The limbs in chains, the heart in agony, 
The soul in dust and chaos. 

Emily; 
A ship is floating in the harbour now, 
A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow. 
There is a path on the sea's azure floor — 
No keel has ever ploughed that path before ; 
The halcyons brood around the foamless isles : 
The treacherous ocean has foresworn its wiles ; 
The merry mariners are bold and free : 
Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me ? 
Our bark is as an albatross whose nest 
Is a far Eden of the purple east ; 
And we between her wings will sit, while Night, 
And Day, and Storm, and Calm pursue their flight, 
Our ministers, along the boundless sea, 
Treading each other's heels, unheededly. 
It is an isle under Ionian skies, 
Beautiful as a wreck of paradise ; 
And, for the harbours are not safe and good, 
This land would have remained a solitude 
But for some pastoral people native there, 
"Who from the elysian, clear, and golden ah 
Draw the last spirit of the age of gold — 
Simple and spirited, innocent and bold. 
The blue iEgean girds this chosen home, 
With ever-changing sound, and light, and foam, 
Kissing the sifted sands and caverns hoar ; 
And all the winds wandering along the shore 



EPIPS YC HID I ON. 1 97 



Undulate with the undulating tide. 

There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide ; 

And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond, 

As clear as elemental diamond, 

Or serene morning air. And far beyond, 

The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer 

(Which the rough shepherd treads but once a-year 

Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls 

Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls 

Illumining, with sound that never fails, 

Accompany the noonday nightingales. 

And all the place is peopled with sweet airs. 

The light clear element which the isle wears 

Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers, 

"Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers, 

And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep ; 

And from the moss violets and jonquils peep, 

And dart their arrowy odour through the brain, 

Till you might faint with that delicious pain. 

And every motion, odour, beam, and tone, 

With that deep music is in unison 

Which is a soul within the soul ; they seem 

Like echoes of an antenatal dream. 

It is an isle 'twixt heaven, air, earth, and sea, 

Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity ; 

Bright as that wandering Eden, Lucifer, 

Washed by the soft blue oceans of young air. 

It is a favoured place. Famine or blight, 

Pestilence, war, and earthquake never light 

Upon its mountain-peaks ; blind vultures, they 

Sail onward far upon their fatal way. 

The winged storms, chanting their thunder-psalm 

To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm 

Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew, 



[98 EPIPSYCHIDION. 



From which its fields and woods ever renew 

Their green and golden immortality. 

And from the sea there rise, and from the sky 

There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright, 

Veil after veil, each hiding some delight : 

Which sun, or moon, or zephyr draws aside, 

Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride 

Glowing at once with love and loveliness, 

Blushes and trembles at its own excess. 

Yet, like a buried lamp, a soul no less 

Burns in the heart of this delicious isle, 

An atom of the Eternal, whose own smilb 

Unfolds itself, and may be felt, not seen, 

O'er the grey rocks, blue waves, and forests green, 

Filling their bare and void interstices. 

But the chief marvel of the wilderness 

Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how 

None of the rustic island-people know. 

'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height 

It overtops the woods ; but, for delight, 

Some wise and tender Ocean-king, ere crime 

Had been invented, in the world's young prime, 

Keared it, a wonder of that simple time, 

And envy of the isles — a pleasure-house 

Made sacred to his sister and his spouse. 

It scarce seems now a wreck of human art, 

But, as it were, Titanic ; in the heart 

Of earth having assumed its form, then grown 

Out of the mountains, from the living stone 

Lifting itself in caverns light and high : 

For all the antique and learned imagery 

Has been erased, and in the place of it 

The ivy and the wild vine interknit 



EPIPSYCHIDION. 199 



The volumes of their many-twining stems. 

Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems 

The lampless halls ; and, when they fade, the sky 

Peeps through their winter- woof of tracery 

With moonlight patches or star atoms keen, 

Or fragments of the day's intense serene, 

"Working mosaic on their Parian floors. 

And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers 

And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem 

To sleep in one another's arms, and dream 

Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that 

we 
Read in their smiles, and call reality. 

This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed 

Thee to be lady of the solitude. 

And I have fitted up some chambers there 

Looking towards the golden eastern air, 

And level with the living winds which flow 

Like waves above the living waves below. 

I have sent books and music there, and all 

Those instruments with which high spirits call 

The future from its cradle, and the past 

Out of its grave, and make the present last 

In thoughts and joys which sleep but cannot die, 

Folded within their own eternity. 

Our simple life wants little, and true taste 

Hires not the pale drudge Luxury to waste 

The scene it would adorn ; and therefore still 

Nature with all her children haunts the hill. 

The ringdove in the embowering ivy yet 

Keeps up her love-lament ; and the owls flit 

Round the evening tower ; and the young stars glance 

Between the quick bats in their twilight dance ; 



2oo EPIPSYCHIDION. 



The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight ' 

Before our gate ; and the slow silent night 

Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep. 

Be this our home in life ; and, when years heap 

Their withered hours like leaves on our decay, 

Let us become the overhanging day, 

The living soul, of this elysian isle — 

Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile 

We two will rise, and sit, and walk together 

Under the roof of blue Ionian weather ; 

And wander in the meadows ; or ascend 

The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend 

With lightest winds to touch their paramour ; 

Or linger where the pebble-paven shore 

Under the quick faint kisses of the sea 

Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy — 

Possessing and possessed by all that is 

Within that calm circumference of bliss, 

And by each other, till to love and live 

Be one ; or at the noontide hour arrive 

Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep 

The moonlight of the expired Night asleep, 

Through which the awakened Day can never peep ; 

A veil for our seclusion, close as Night's, 

Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights — 

Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain 

Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again. 

And we will talk, until thought's melody 

Become too sweet for utterance, and it die 

In words, to live again in looks, which dart 

With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart, 

Harmonising silence without a sound. 

Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound, 

And oar veins beat together ; and bur lips, 



EPIPS YC HID ION. 



"With other eloquence than words, eclipse 

The soul that burns between them ; and the wells 

Which boil under our being's inmost cells, 

The fountains of our deepest life, shall be 

Confused in passion's golden purity, 

As mountain-springs under the morning sun. 

"We shall become the same, we shall be one 

Spirit within two frames, oh, wherefore two ? 

One passion in twin hearts, which grows and grew 

Till, like two meteors of expanding flame, 

Those spheres instinct with it become the same, 

Touch, mingle, are transfigured ; ever still 

Burning, yet ever inconsumable ; 

In one another's substance finding food, 

Like flames too pure, and light, and unimbued 

To nourish their bright lives with baser prey, 

"Which point to heaven and cannot pass away : 

One hope within two wills, one will beneath 

Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death, 

One heaven, one hell, one immortality, 

And one annihilation ! 

Woe is me ! 
The winged words on which my soul would pierce 
Into the height of Love's rare universe 
Are chains of lead around its flight of fire — 
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire ! 



Weak verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign's feet, 
And say — " We are the masters of thy slave ; 

What wouldest thou with us and ours and thine ?* 
Then call your sisters from Oblivion's cave, 



202 EPIPSYCHIDION. 



All singing loud : " Love's very pain is sweet ; 
But its reward is in the world divine, 
Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave." 
So shall ye live when I am there. Then haste 

Over the hearts of men, until ye meet 
Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest, 
And bid them love each other, and be blessed : 

And leave the troop which errs and which reproves, 

And come and be my guest — for I am Love's. 





POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. 



LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY. 

THE fountains mingle with the river. 
And the rivers with the ocean ; 
The winds of heaven mix for evei 

With a sweet emotion ; 
Nothing in the world is single ; 

All things by a law divine 
In one another's being mingle — «^ 
Why not I with thine ? 



See, the mountains kiss high heaven, 
And the waves clasp one another ; 
No sister flower would be forgiven 
If it disdained its brother ; 
And the sunlight clasps the earth, 

And the moonbeams kiss the sea — 
What are all these kissings worth, 
If thou kiss not me ? 



January 1820. 



204 ODE TO LIBERTY. 



ODE TO LIBERTY. 

" Yet, Freedom, yet, thy banner, torn but flying, 
Streams like a thunder-storm against the wind."— Byron. 

1. A GLOKIOUS people vibrated again 
r\^ The lightning of the nations : Liberty, 
From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er Spain, 

Scattering contagious fire into the sky, 
Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay, 
And in the rapid plumes of song 
Olothed itself, sublime and strong, 
As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among, 
Hovering inverse o'er its accustomed prey : 

Till from its station in the heaven of Fame 
The Spirit's whirlwind rapt it ; and the ray 

Of the remotest sphere of living flame 
Which paves the void was from behind it flung, 
As foam from a ship's swiftness, when there came 
A voice out of the deep ; I will record the same. 

2. " The sun and the serenest moon sprang forth ; 

The burning stars of the abyss were hurled 
Into the depths of heaven ; the dsedal earth, 

That island in the ocean of the world, 
Hung in its cloud of all-sustaining air. 
But this divinest universe 
Was yet a chaos and a curse, 
For Thou wert not : but, power from worst producing 
worse, 
The spirit of the beasts was kindled there, 

And. of the birds, and of the watery forms — 
And there was war among them, and despair 
Within them, raging without truce or terms. 



ODE TO LIBERTY. 205 



The bosom of their violated nurse 

Groaned, for beasts warred on beasts, and worms 
on worms, 
And men on men ; each heart was as a hell of storms. 

3. "Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied 

His generations under the pavilion 
Of the sun's throne : palace and pyramid, 

Temple and prison, to many a swarming million 
"Were as to mountain-wolves their rugged caves. 
This human living multitude 
"Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude — 
For Thou wert not ; but o'er the populous solitude, 
Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves, 

Hung Tyranny ; beneath sate deified 
The Sister-pest, congregator of slaves 

Into the shadow of her pinions wide. 
Anarchs and priests, who feed on gold and blood 
Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed, 
Drove the astonished herds of men from every side. 

4. " The nodding promontories and blue isles 

And cloud-like mountains and dividuous waves 
Of Greece basked glorious in the open smiles 

Of favouring heaven : from their enchanted caves 
Prophetic echoes flung dim melody 
On the unapprehensive wild. 
The vine, the corn, the olive mild, 
Grew, savage yet, to human use unreconciled ;• 
And, like unfolded flowers beneath the sea, 

Like the man's thought dark in the infant's brain, 
Like aught that is which wraps what is to be, 

Art's deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein 
Of Parian stone : and, yet a speechless child, 



2o6 ODE TO LIBERTY. 



Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain 
Her lidless eyes for Thee — when o'er the JEgean main. 

5. "Athens arose : a city such as vision 

Builds from the purple crags and silver towers 
Of battlemented cloud, as in derision 

Of kingliest masonry : the ocean floors 
Pave it ; the evening sky pavilions it ; 
Its portals are inhabited 
By thunder-zoned winds, each head 
Within its cloudy wings with sun-fire garlanded, 
A divine work ! Athens diviner yet 

Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the will 
Of man as on a mount of diamond set ; 

For Thou wert, and thine all-creative skill 
Peopled, with forms that mock the eternal dead 
In marble immortality, that hill 
Which was thine earliest throne and latest oracle. 

6. " Within the surface of time's fleeting river 

Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay, 
Immovably unquiet, and for ever 

It trembles, but it cannot pass away. 
The voice of thy bards and sages thunder 
With an earth-awakening blast 
Through the caverns of the past ; 
Keligion veils her eyes, Oppression shrinks aghast ; 
A winged sound of joy, and love, and wonder, 

Which soars where expectation never flew, 
Rending the veil of space and time asunder. 

One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew 
One sun illumines heaven ; one Spirit vast 
With life and love makes chaos ever new — 
As Athens doth the world with thy delight renew. 



ODE TO LIBERTY, 207 



7. " Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest, 

Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmean Maenad, 
She drew the milk of greatness, though thy dearest 

From that elysian food was yet unweaned ; 
And many a deed of terrible uprightness 
By thy sweet love was sanctified ; 
And in thy smile and by thy side 
Saintly Camillus lived, and firm Attilius died. 

But, when tears stained thy robe of vesta 
whiteness, 
And gold profaned thy capitolian throne, 
Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness, 

The senate of the tyrants : they sunk prone, 
Slaves of one tyrant. Palatinus sighed 
Faint echoes of Ionian song ; that tone 
Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown. 

8. " From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill, 

Or piny promontory of the Arctic main, 
Or utmost islet inaccessible, 

Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign, 
Teaching the woods and waves, and desert rocks, 
And every Naiad's ice-cold urn, 
To talk in echoes sad and stern 
Of that sublimest lore which man had dared unlearn ? 
For neither didst thou watch the wizard flocks 
Of the Scald's dreams, nor haunt the Druid's 



What if the tears rained through thy shattered locks 
Were, quickly dried ? for thou didst groan, not 
weep, 
. When from its sea of death, to kill and burn, 

The Galilean serpent forth did creep, 
And made thy world an undistinguishable heap. 



2o8 ODE TO LIBERTY. 



9. "A thousand years the Earth cried, 'Where art 
thou ? ' 
And then the shadow of thy coming fell 
On Saxon Alfred's olive-cinctured brow : 

And many a warrior-peopled citadel, 
Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep, 
Arose in sacred Italy, 
Frowning o'er the tempestuous sea 
Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crowned 
majesty. 
That multitudinous anarchy did sweep 

And burst around their walls like idle foam, 
Whilst from the human spirit's deepest deep 

Strange melody with love and awe struck dumb 
Dissonant arms ; and Art, which cannot die, 
With divine wand traced on our earthly home 
Fit imagery to pave heaven's everlasting dome. 

10. ' ' Thou Huntress swifter than the Moon ! thou terror 
Of the world's wolves ! thou bearer of the quiver 
Whose sunlike shafts pierce tempest-winged Error, 

As light may pierce the clouds when they dissever 
In the calm regions of the orient day ! 

Luther caught thy wakening glance : 
Like lightning from his leaden lance 
Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance 
In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay ; 
And England's prophets hailed thee as their 
queen, 
In songs whose music cannot pass away 

Though it must flow for ever. Not unseen, 
Before the spirit-sighted countenance 

Of Milton, didst thou pass from the sad scene 
Beyond whose night he saw, with a dejected mien. 



ODE TO LIBERTY. 209 



11. "The eager Hours and unreluctant Years 

As on a dawn-illumined mountain stood, 
Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears, 
Darkening each other with their multitude — 
And cried aloud, ' Liberty ! ' Indignation 
Answered Pity from her cave ; 
Death grew pale within the grave, 
And Desolation howled to the destroyer, ' Save ! ' 
When, like heaven's sun girt by the exhalation 

Of its own glorious light, thou didst arise, 
Chasing thy foes from nation unto nation 

Like shadows : as if day had cloven the skies 
At dreaming midnight o'er the western wave, 
Men started, staggering with a glad surprise, 
Under the lightnings of thine unfamiliar eyes. 

12. " Thou heaven of earth ! what spells could pall thee 

then 
In ominous eclipse ? A thousand years 
Bred from the slime of deep Oppression's den 

Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears, 
Till thy s.\veet stars could weep the stain away. 
How, like Bacchanals of blood, 
Round France, the ghastly vintage, stood 
Destruction's sceptred slaves, and Folly's mitred 
brood ! 
When one, like them, but mightier far than they, 

The Anarch of thine own bewildered powers, 
Rose : armies mingled in obscure array, [bowers 

Like clouds with clouds darkening the sacred 
Of serene heaven. He, by the past pursued, 
Rests with those dead but unforgotten hours 
Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral 
towers. 

* o 



2io ODE TO LIBERTY, 



13. " England yet sleeps : was she not called of old ? 

Spain calls her now — as with its thrilling thunder 
Vesuvius wakens iEtna, and the cold 

Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder : 
O'er the lit waves every iEolian isle 
From Pithecusa to Pelorus 
Howls, and leaps, and glares in chorus : 
They cry, ' Be dim, ye lamps of heaven suspended 
o'er us ! ' 
Her chains are threads of gold — she need but smile, 
And they dissolve; but Spain's were links of 
steel, 
Till bit to dust by virtue's keenest file. 

Twins of a single destiny ! appeal 
To the eternal years enthroned before us 
In the dim West ! Impress us from a seal, 
All ye have thought and done ! Time cannot dare 
conceal. 

14. " Tomb of Arminius ! render up thy dead — 

Till, like a standard from a watch-tower's staff, 
His soul may stream over the tyrant's head ! 

Thy victory shall be his epitaph ! 
"Wild Bacchanal of truth's mysterious wine, 
King-deluded Germany, 
His dead spirit lives in thee ! 
Why do we fear or hope ? Thou art already free ! — 
And thou, lost paradise of this divine 

And glorious world ! thou flowery wilderness ! 
Thou island of eternity ! thou shrine 

Where Desolation, clothed with loveliness, 
Worships the thing thou wert ! Italy, 
Gather thy blood into thy heart ; repress 
The beasts who make their dens thy tiered palaces ! 



ODE TO LIBERTY. 211 



15. ( * Oh that the free would stamp the impious name 

Of ' King ' into the dust ; or write it there, 
So that this blot upon the page of fame 

"Were as a serpent's path which the light air 
Erases, and the flat sands close behind I 
Ye the oracle have heard : 
Lift the victory-flashing sword, 
And cut the snaky knots of this foul gordian word, 
"Which, weak itself as stubble, yet can bind 

Into a mass irrefragably firm 
The axes and the rods which awe mankind. 

The sound has poison in it ; 'tis the sperm 
Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorred.. 
Disdain not Thou, at thiue appointed term, 
To set thine armed heel on this reluctant worm. 

16. "Oh that the wise from their bright minds would 

kindle 
Such lamps within the dome of this dim world 
That the pale name of Priest might shrink and 
dwindle 
Into the hell from which it first was hurled, 
A scoff of impious pride from fiends impure ! 

Till human thoughts might kneel alone, 
Each before the judgment-throne 
Of its own aweless soul, or of the Power unknown. 
Oh that the words which make the thoughts obscure 
From which they spring, as clouds of glimmering 
dew 
From a white lake blot heaven's blue portraiture, 

"Were stripped of their thin masks and various hue, 
And frowns and smiles and splendours not their own, 
Till in the nakedness of false and true 
They stand before their lord, each to receive its due ! 



212 ODE TO LIBERTY. 



17. "He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever 

Can be between the cradle and the grave 
Crowned him the King of Life. Oh vain endeavour. 

If on his own high will, a willing slave, 
He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor ! 
What if earth can clothe and feed 
Amplest millions at their need, 
And power in thought be as the tree within the seed — 
Or what if Art, an ardent intercessor, 

Diving on fiery wings to Nature's throne, 
Checks the great Mother stooping to caress her, 

And cries, ' Give me, thy child, dominion 
Over all height and depth' — if Life can breed 

New wants, and Wealth, from those who toil and 
groan 
Rend, of thy gifts and hers, a thousandfold for one ? 

18. " Come Thou ! But lead out of the inmost cave 

Of man's deep spirit — as the morning star 
Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave — 

Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car, 
Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame ! 
Comes she not ? And come ye not, 
Rulers of Eternal thought, 
To judge with solemn truth Life's ill-apportioned lot — 
Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame 

Of what has been, the Hope of what will be ? 
Libert}' — (if such could be thy name 

Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from 
thee)— 
If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought 
By blood or tears, have not the wise and free 
Wept tears, and blood like tears ? " — The solemn 
harmony 



ARETHUSA. 213 



19. Paused, and the Spirit of that mighty singing 
To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn. 
Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging 
Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn, 
Sinks headlong through the aerial golden light 
On the heavy-sounding plain, 
When the bolt has pierced its brain ; 
As summer clouds dissolve unburthened of their rain ; 
As a far taper fades with fading night ; 

As a brief insect dies with dying^ day ; 
My song, its pinions disarrayed of might, 

Drooped. O'er it closed the echoes far away 

Of the great voice which did its flight sustain — 

As waves which lately paved his watery way 

Hiss round a drowner's head in their tempestuous play. 



A 1 



ARETHUSA. 

RETHUSA arose 

From her couch of snows 
In the Acroceraunian mountains — 

From cloud and from crag. 

With many a jag, 
Shepherding her bright fountains. 

She leapt down the rocks, 

With her rainbow locks 
Streaming among the streams ; 

Her steps paved with green 

The downward ravine 
Which slopes to the western gleams : 



214 ARETHUSA. 



And gliding and springing 
She went, ever singing 

In murmurs as soft as sleep. 

The Earth seemed to love her, 
And Heaven smiled above her, 

As she lingered towards the deep. 

2. Then Alpheus bold, 
On his glacier cold, 

"With his trident the mountains strook, 

And opened a chasm 

In the rocks — with the spasm 
All Erymanthus shook. 

And the black south wind 

It concealed behind 
The urns of the silent snow, 

And earthquake and thunder 

Did rend in sunder 
The bars of the spirits below. 

The beard and the hair 

Of the River-god were 
Seen through the torrent's sweep, 

As he followed the light 

Of the fleet Nymph's flight 
To the brink of the Dorian deep, 

3. "Oh save me ! Oh guide me ! 
And bid the deep hide me ! 

For he grasps me now by the hair ! " 
The loud Ocean heard, 
To its blue depth stirred, 

And divided at her prayer ; 
And under the water 
The Earth's white daughter 



ARETHUSA. 215 



Fled like a sunny beam ; 

Behind her descended 

Her billows, unblended 
With the brackish Dorian stream. 

Like a gloomy stain 

On the emerald main, 
Alpheus rushed behind — 

As an eagle pursuing 

A dove to its ruin 
Down the streams of the cloudy wind. 

4. Under the bowers 
Where the Ocean Powers 

Sit on their pearled thrones ; 

Through the coral woods 
Of the weltering floods ; 

Over heaps of unvalued stones ; 
Through the dim beams 
Which amid the streams 

Weave a network of coloured light ; 
And under the caves 
Where the shadowy waves 

Are as green as the forest's night : 
Outspeeding the shark 
And the sword-fish dark — 

Under the ocean foam, 

And up through the rifts 
Of the mountain cliffs — 

They passed to their Dorian home. 

5. And now from their fountains 
In Enna's mountains, 

Down one vale where the morning basks, 



216 HYMN OF APOLLO. 



Like friends once parted 
Grown single-hearted, 

They ply their watery tasks. 
At sunrise they leap 
From their cradles steep 

In the cave of the shelving hill ; 
At noontide they flow 
Through the woods below, 
And the meadows of asphodel ; 
And at night they sleep 
In the rocking deep 

Beneath the Ortygian shore — 
Like spirits that lie 
In the azure sky, 

When they love but live no more. 

Pisa. 



HYMN OF APOLLO. 

THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie, 
Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries 
From the broad moonlight of the sky, 
Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes, 
"Waken me when their Mother, the grey Dawn, 
Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone. 

Then I arise, and, climbing heaven's blue dome,- 
I walk over the mountains and the waves, 

Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam — 

My footsteps pave the clouds with fire ; the caves 

Are filled with my bright presence ; and the air 

Leaves the green Earth to my embraces bare. 



HYMN OF APOLLO. 217 



The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill 
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day ; 

All men who do or even imagine ill 
Fly me, and from the glory of my ray 

Good minds and open actions take new might, 

Until diminished by the reign of Night. 

I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers, 
With their ethereal colours ; the moon's globe, 

And the pure stars in their eternal bowers, 
Are cinctured with my power as with a robe ; 

Whatever lamps on earth or heaven may shine 

Are portions of one power, which is mine. 

I stand at noon upon the peak of heaven ; 

Then with unwilling steps I wander down 
Into the clouds of the Atlantic even ; 

For grief that I depart they weep and frown. 
What look is more delightful than the smile 
With which I soothe them from the western isle ? 

I am the eye with which the universe 
Beholds itself, and knows itself divine ; 

All harmony of instrument or verse, 
All prophecy, all medicine, are mine, 

All light of art or nature — to my son^ 

Victory and praise in its own right belong. 



218 HYMN OF PAN 



HYMN OF PAN. 

FROM the forests and highlands 
We come, we come ; 
From the river-girt islands, 

Where loud waves are dumb 
Listening to my sweet pipings. 

The wind in the reeds and the rushes, 

The bees on the bells of thyme, 
The birds on the myrtle bushes, 
The cicale above in the lime, 
And the lizards below in the grass, 
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was, 
Listening to my sweet pipings. 

Liquid Peneus was flowing, 
And all dark Tempe lay 
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing 

The light of the dying day, 
Speeded by my sweet pipings. 
The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns, 

And the Nymphs of the woods and waves, 
To the edge of the moist river-lawns, 
And the brink of the dewy caves, 
And all that did then attend and follow, 
Were silent with love — as you now, Apollo, 
With envy of my sweet pipings. 

I sang of the dancing stars, 

I sang of the daedal earth, 
And of heaven, and the Giant wars, 

And love, and death, and birth. 
And then I changed my pipings — 



THE QUESTION. 219 



Singing how down the vale of Msenalus 
I pursued a maiden, and clasped a reed : 

Gods and men, we are all deluded thus ; 
It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed. 

All wept — as I think both ye now would, 

If envy or age had not frozen your blood — 
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings. 



THE QUESTION. 

I DREAMED that, as I wandered by the way, 
Bare winter suddenly was changed to Spring ; 
And gentle odours led my steps astray, 

Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring 
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay 

Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling 
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, 
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in 
dream. 



There grew pied wind-flowers and violets ; 

Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, 
The constellated flower that never sets ; 

Faint oxlips ; tender bluebells, at whose birth 
The sod scarce heaved ; and that tall flower that 
wets — 

Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth — 
Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears 
When the low wind its playmate's voice it hears. 



22o THE QUESTION. 



And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, 

Green cow-bind and the moonlight-coloured may, 

And cherry-blossoms, and white cups whose wine 
Was the bright dew yet drained not by the Day ; 

And wild roses, and ivy serpentine, 

With its dark buds and leaves wandering astray ; 

And flowers, azure, black, and streaked with gold, 

Fairer than any wakened eyes behold. 

And nearer to the river's trembling edge 

There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked 
with white, 

And starry river-buds among the sedge, 
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright, 

Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge 

With moonlight beams of their own watery light ; 

And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green 

As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen. 

Methought that of these visionary flowers 
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way 

That the same hues which in their natural bowers 
Were mingled or opposed, the like array 

Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours 
Within my hand — and then, elate and gay, 

I hastened to the spot whence I had come, 

That I might there present it — oh ! to whom ? 



w 



THE SENSITIVE PLANT. 221 

THE SENSITIVE PLANT. 

PART I. 

1. A SENSITIVE Plant in a garden grew ; 

jtx. And the young winds fed it with silver dew ; 
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light, 
And closed them beneath the kisses of Night. 

2. And the Spring arose on the garden fair, 
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere ; 

And each flower and herb on earth's dark breast 
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest. 

3. But none ever trembled and panted with bliss 
In the garden, "the field, or the wilderness, 

Like a doe in the noontide with love's sweet want, 
As the companionless Sensitive Plant. 

4. The snowdrop, and then the violet, 

Arose from the ground with warm rain wet ; 
And their breath was mixed with fresh odour sent 
From the turf, like the voice and the instrument. 

5. Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall, 
And narcissi, the fairest among them all, 
Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess 
Till they die of their own dear loveliness ; 

6. And the Naiad-like lily of the vale, 

Whom youth makes so fair, and passion so pale, 
That the light of its tremulous bells is seen 
Through their pavilions of tender green ; 

7. And the hyacinth, purple, and white, and blue, 
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anow 



222 THE SENSITIVE PLANT. 



Of music so delicate, soft, and intense, 
It was felt like an odour within the sense ; 

8. And the rose, like a nymph to the bath addressed, 
Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast, 
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air 

The soul of her beauty and love lay bare ; 

9. And the wand-like lily, which lifted up, 
As a Maenad, its moonlight-coloured cup, 
Till the fiery star which is its eye 

Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky ; 

10. And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose — 
The sweetest flower for scent that blows — 

And all rare blossoms from every clime, 
Grew in that garden in purest prime. 

11. And on the stream whose inconstant bosom 

"Was pranked under boughs of embowering blossom, 
With golden and green light slanting through 
Their heaven of many a tangled hue, 

12. Broad water-lilies lay tremulously, 
And starry river-buds glimmered by ; 

And around them the soft stream did glide and dance 
With a motion of sweet sound and radiance. 

13. And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss 
Which led through the garden along and across, 
Some open at once to the sun and the breeze, 
Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees, 

14. Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells 
As fair as the fabulous asphodels, 



THE SENSITIVE PLANT. 223 



And flowerets which, drooping as day drooped too, 
Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue, 
To roof the glow-worm from the evening dew. 

15. And from this undefiled paradise 

The flowers (as an infant's awakening eyes 
Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet 
Can first lull and at last must awaken it), 

16. "When heaven's blithe winds had unfolded them 
As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem, 

Shone smiling to heaven, and every one 
Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun ; 

17. For each one was interpenetrated 

"With the light and the odour its neighbour shed, 
Like young lovers whom youth and love make dear, 
"Wrapped and filled by their mutual atmosphere. 

18. But the Sensitive Plant, which could give small 

fruit 
Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root, 
Received more than all ; it loved more than ever, 
"Where none wanted but it, could belong to the 

giver — 

19. For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower ; 
Radiance and odour are not its dower ; 

It loves even like Love — its deep heart is full ; 
It desires what it has not, the beautiful. 

20. The light winds which from unsustaining wings 
Shed the music of many murmurings ; 

The beams which dart from many a star 
Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar ; 



224 THE SENSITIVE PLANT. 



21. The plumed insects swift and free, 
Like golden boats on a sunny sea, 
Laden with light and odour, which pass 
Over the gleam of the living grass ; 

22. The unseen clouds of the dew which lie 
Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides high, 
Then wander like spirits among the spheres, 
Each cloud faint with the fragrance it bears ; 

23. The quivering vapours of dim noontide, 
Which like a sea o'er the warm earth glide, 
In which every sound, and odour, and beam 
Move as reeds in a single stream — 

24. Each and all like ministering angels were 
For the Sensitive Plant sweet jo} r to bear, 
Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by, 
Like windless clouds o'er a tender sky. 

25. And, when evening descended from heaven above, 
And the earth was all rest, and the air was all love, 
And delight, though less bright, was far more deep, 
And the day's veil fell from the world of sleep — 

26. And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were 

drowned 
In an ocean of dreams without a sound, 
Whose waves never mark though they ever impress 
The light sand which paves it, consciousness — 

27. (Only overhead the sweet nightingale 
Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail, 
And snatches of its elysian chant 

Were mixed with the dream of the Sensitive Plant) — 



THE SENSITIVE PLANT. 225 



28. The Sensitive Plant was the earliest 
Upgathered into the "bosom of rest ; 
A sweet child weary of its delight, 
The feeblest and yet the favourite, 
Cradled within the embrace of Night. 

PART II. 

1. There was a power in this sweet place r 
An Eve in this Eden ; a ruling Grace 

Which to the flowers, did they waken or dream, 
Was as God is to the starry scheme. 

2. A Lady, the wonder of her kind, 

Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind, 
Which, dilating, had moulded her mien and motion 
Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean, 

3. Tended the garden from morn to even : 
And the meteors of that sublunar heaven, 

Like the lamps of the air when Night walks forth, 
Laughed round her footsteps up from the earth. 

4. She had no companion of mortal race ; 

But her tremulous breath and her flushing face 
Told, whilst the morn kissed the sleep from her eyes, 
That her dreams were less slumber than paradise : 

5. As if some bright Spirit for her sweet sake 

Had deserted heaven while the stars were awake, 

As if yet around her he lingering were, 

Though the veil of daylight concealed him from her. 

6. Her step seemed to pity the grass it pressed : 
You might hear, by the heaving of her breast, 



226 THE SENSITIVE PLANT. 



That the coming and going of the wind 
Brought pleasure there, and left passion behind. 

7. And, wherever her airy footstep trod, 
Her trailirjg hair from the grassy sod 
Erased its light vestige with shadowy sweep, 
Like a sunny storm o'er the dark-green deep. 

8. I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet 
Eejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet ; 

I doubt not they felt the spirit that came 

From her glowing fingers through all their frame. 

9. She sprinkled bright water from the stream 
On those that were faint with the sunny beam ; 
And out of the cups of the heavy flowers 

She emptied the rain of the thunder-showers. 

10. She lifted their heads with her tender hands, 
And sustained them with rods and osier bands ; 
If the flowers had been her osvn infants, she 
Could never have nursed them more tenderly. 

11. And all killing insects and gnawing worms, 
And things of obscene and unlovely forms, 
She bore in a basket of Indian woof 

Into the rough woods far aloof — 

12. In a basket of grasses and wild flowers full, 
The freshest her gentle hands could pull 
For the poor banished insects, whose intent, 
Although they did ill, was innocent. 

13. But the bee, and the beamlike ephemeris [kiss 
Whose path is the lightning's, and soft moths that 



THE SENSITIVE PLANT. 227 



The sweet lips of the flowers, and harm not, did she 
Make her attendant angels be. 

14. And many an antenatal tomb 

"Where butterflies dream of the life to come 
She left clinging round the smooth and dark 
Edge of the odorous cedar bark. 

15. This fairest Creature from earliest Spring 
Thus moved through the garden ministering 
All the sweet season of summer tide : 

And, ere the first leaf looked brown, she died. 



PART III. 

1. Three days the flowers of the garden fair 
Like stars when the moon is awakened were, 
Or the waves of Baise ere luminous 

She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius. 

2. And on the fourth the Sensitive Plant 
Felt the sound of the funeral chant ; 

And the steps of the bearers, heavy and slow ; 
And the sobs of the mourners, deep and low ; 

3. The weary sound and the heavy breath ; 
And the silent motions of passing death ; 
And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank, 
Sent through the pores of the coffin plank. 

4. The dark grass, and the flowers among the grass, 
Were bright with tears as the crowd did pass ; 
From their sighs the Wind caught a mournful tone, 
And sate in the pines, and gave groan for groan. 



228 THE SENSITIVE PLANT. 



5. The garden, once fair, became cold and foul, 
Like the corpse of her who had been its soul ; 
"Which at first was lovely as if in sleep, 
Then slowly changed, till it grew a heap 

To make men tremble who never weep. 

6. Swift summer into the autumn flowed ; 
And frost in the mist of the morning rode, 
Though the noonday sun looked clear and bright, 
Mocking the spoil of the secret night. 

7. The rose-leaves, like flakes of crimson snow, 
Paved the turf and the moss below : 

The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan, 
Like the head and the skin of a dying man ; 

8. And Indian plants, of scent and hue 
The sweetest that ever were fed on dew, 
Leaf after leaf, day after day, 

"Were massed into the common clay. 

9. And the leaves, brown, yellow, and grey, and red, 
And white with the whiteness of what is dead, 
Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind passed : 
Their whistling noise made the birds aghast. 

10. And the gusty winds waked the winged seeds 
Out of their birthplace of ugly weeds, 

Till they clung round many a sweet flower's stem, 
"Which rotted into the earth with them. 

11. The water-blooms under the rivulet 

Fell from the stalks on which they were set ; 
And the eddies drove them here and there, 
As the winds did those of the upper air. 



THE SENSITIVE PLANT 229 



12. Then the rain came down ; and the broken stalks 
"Were bent and tangled across the walks ; 

And the leafless network of parasite bowers 
Massed into ruin, and all sweet flowers. 

13. Between the time of the wind and the snow, 
All loathliest weeds began to grow, 

Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a 

speck, 
Like the water-snake's belly and the toad's back ; 

14. And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank, 
And the dock, and henbane ; and hemlock dank 
Stretched out its long and hollow shank, 

And stifled the air till the dead wind stank. 

15. And plants at whose names the verse feels loth 
Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth, 
Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue, 
Livid, and starred with a lurid dew. 

16. And agarics and fungi, with mildew and mould, 
Started like mist from the wet ground cold ; 
Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead 

With a spirit of growth had been animated. 

17. Their moss rotted off them flake by flake, 

Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer's stake, 
Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high, 
Infecting the winds that wander by. 

18. Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum, 
Made the running rivulet thick and dumb, 
And at its outlet flags huge as stakes 

Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes. 



230 THE SENSITIVE PLANT, 



19. And hour by hour, when the air was still, 
The vapours arose which have strength to kill : 
At morn they were seen, at noon they were felt, 
At night they were darkness no star could melt. 

20. And unctuous meteors from spray to spray 
Crept and flitted in broad noonday 
Unseen ; every branch on which they alit 
By a venomous blight was burned and bit. 

21. The Sensitive Plant, like one forbid, 
Wept, and the tears within each lid 

Of its folded leaves which together grew, 
Were changed to a blight of frozen glue. 

22. For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon 
By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn ; 
The sap shrank to the root through every pore, 
As blood to a heart that will beat no more. 

23. For Winter came : the wind was his whip ; 
One choppy finger was on his lip : 

He had torn the cataracts from the hills, 
And they clanked at his girdle like manacles. 

24. His breath was a chain which without a sound 
The earth, and the air, and the water bound ; 
He came, fiercely driven in his chariot-throne 
By the tenfold blasts of the Arctic zone. 

25. Then the weeds, which were forms of living death, 
Fled from the frost to the earth beneath : 

Their decay and sudden flight from frost 
Was but like the vanishing of a ghost. 



THE SENSITIVE PLANT. 231 



26. And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant 
The moles and the dormice died for want : 
The birds dropped stiff from the frozen air, 

And were caught in the branches naked and bare. 

27. First there came down a thawing rain, 

And its dull drops froze on the boughs again ; 
Then there steamed up a freezing dew 
"Which to the drops of the thaw-rain grew ; 

28. And a northern Whirlwind, wandering about 
Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out, 
Shook the boughs, thus laden, and heavy, and stiff, 
And snapped them off with his rigid griff. 

29. When Winter had gone, and Spring came back, 
The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck ; 

But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and docks, and 

darnels 
Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels. 

CONCLUSION. 

1. Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that 



Which within its boughs like a spirit sat 
Ere its outward form had known decay, 
Now felt this change, I cannot say. 

2. Whether that Lady's gentle mind, 
No longer with the form combined 
Which scattered love as stars do light, 
Found sadness where it left delight, 

3. I dare not guess. But, in this life 
Of error, ignorance, and strife, 



2^2 THE CLOUD. 



Where nothing is but all things seem, 
And we the shadows of the dream, 

4. It is a modest creed, and yet 
Pleasant if one considers it, 

To own that death itself must be, 
Like all the rest, a mockery. 

5. That garden sweet, that Lady fair, 
And all sweet shapes and odours there, 
In truth have never passed away : 

'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed ; not they. 

6. For love, and beauty, and delight, 

There is no death nor change ; their might 
Exceeds our organs, which endure 
No light, being themselves obscure. 



THE CLOUD. 

I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers 
From the seas and the streams ; 
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid 

In their noonday dreams. 
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken 

The sweet buds every one, 
When rocked to rest on their Mother's breast, 

As she dances about the sun. 
I wield the flail of the lashing hail, 

And whiten the green plains under ; 
And then again I dissolve it in rain, 
And laugh as I pass in thunder. 



THE CLOUD. 233 



I sift the snow on the mountains below, 

And their great pines groan aghast ; 
And all the night 'tis my pillow white, 

While I sleep in the arms of the Blast. 
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers 

Lightning my pilot sits ; 
In a cavern under is fettered the Thunder, 

It struggles and howls at fits. 
Over earth and ocean with gentle motion 

This pilot is guiding me, 
Lured by the Love of the Genii that move 

In the depths of the purple sea ; 
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, 

Over the lakes and the plains, 
Wherever he dream under mountain or stream 

The Spirit he loves remains ; 
And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, 

Whilst he is dissolving in rains. 

The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes, 

And his burning plumes outspread, 
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, 

When the morning star shines dead : 
As on the jag of a mountain crag 

Which an earthquake rocks and swings 
An eagle alit one moment may sit 

In the light of its golden wings. 
And, when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea 
beneath 

Its ardours of rest and of love, 
And the crimson pall of eve may fall 

From the depth of heaven above, 
With wings folded I rest on mine airy nest, 

As still as a brooding dove. 



234 THE CLOUD. 



That orbed maiden with white fire laden 

Whom mortals call the Moon 
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor 

By the midnight breezes strewn ; 
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, 

Which only the angels hear, 
May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, 

The Stars peep behind her and peer. 
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee 

Like a swarm of golden bees, 
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent — 

Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, 
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, 

Are each paved with the moon and these. 

I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone, 

And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl ; 
The volcanoes are dim, and the Stars reel and swim, 

When the Whirlwinds my banner unfurl. 
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, 

Over a torrent sea, 
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof ; 

The mountains its columns be. 
The trumphal arch through which I march, 

With hurricane, fire, and snow, 
When the Power of the air are chained to my chair 

Is the million-coloured bow ; 
The Sphere-fire above its soft colours wove, 

While the moist Earth was laughing below. 

I am the daughter of Earth and Water, 

And the nursling of the Sky : 
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores ; 

I change, but I cannot die. 



TO A SKYLARK. 235 



For after the rain, when with never a stain 

The pavilion of heaven is hare, 
And the winds, and sunbeams, with their convex 
gleams, 

Build up the blue dome of air, 
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph — 

And out of the caverns of rain, 
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the 
tomb, 

I arise, and unbuild it again. 



TO A SKYLARK. 

1. T TAIL to thee, blithe spirit — 
JQ Bird thou never wert — 
That from heaven or near it 

Pourest thy full heart 
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 

2. Higher still and higher 

From the earth thou springest : 
Like a cloud of fire, 

The blue deep thou wingest, 
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. 

3. In the golden lightning 

Of the sunken sun, 
O'er which clouds are brightening, 
Thou dost float and run, 
Like an embodied joy whose race is just begun. 



236 TO A SKYLARK. 



4. The pale purple even 

Melts around thy flight ; 
Like a star of heaven 
In the broad daylight, 
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight — 

5. Keen as are the arrows 

Of that silver sphere 
Whose intense lamp narrows 
In the white dawn clear, 
Until we hardly see, we feel, that it is there. 

6. All the earth and air 

With thy voice is loud, 
As, when night is bare, 
From one lonely cloud 
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed. 

7. What thou art we know not ; 

What is most like thee ? 
From the rainbow clouds there flow not 
Drops so bright to see 
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody — 

8. Like a poet hidden 

In the light of thought, 
Singing hymns unbidden, 
Till the world is wrought 
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not : 

9. Like a high-born maiden 

In a palace tower, 
Soothing her love-laden 
Soul in secret hour 
With music sweet as love which overflows her bower : 



TO A SKYLARK. 237 



10. Like a glow-worm golden 
In a dell of dew, 
Scattering unbehojden 
Its aerial hue 
Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the 



11. Like a rose embowered |^- 

In its own green leaves, 
By warm winds deflowered, 
Till the scent it gives 
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy winged 
thieves. 

12. Sound of vernal showers 

On the twinkling grass, 
Rain-awakened flowers — 
All that ever was, 
Joyous, and clear, and fresh — thy music doth surpass. 

13. Teach us, sprite or bird, 

What sweet thoughts are thine : 
I have never heard 
Praise of love or wine 
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. 

14. Chorus hymeneal 

Or triumphal chant, 
Matched with thine, would be all 
But an empty vaunt — 
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. 

15. What objects are the fountains 

Of thy happy strain ? 



238 TO A SKYLARK. 



What fields, or waves, or mountains ? 
What shapes of sky or plain ? 
What love of thine own kind ? what ignorance of pain ? 

16. With thy clear keen joyance 

Langour cannot be : 
Shadow of annoyance 
Never came near thee : 
Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. 

17. Waking or asleep, 

Thou of death must deem 
Things more true and deep 
Than we mortals dream, 
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream ? 

18. We look before and after, 

And pine for what is not : 
Our sincerest laughter 

With some pain is fraught ; 
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. 

19. Yet, if we could scorn 

Hate, and pride, and fear, 
If we were things born 
Not to shed a tear, 
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. 

20. Better than all measures 

Of delightful sound, 
Better than all treasures 
That in books are found, 
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground ! 



THE TWO SPIRITS. 239 



21. Teach me half the gladness 

That thy brain must know ; 
Such harmonious madness 
From my lips would flow 
The world should listen then as I am listening now. 



TO 

I FEAR thy kisses, gentle maiden ; 
Thou needest not fear mine — 
My spirit is too deeply laden 
Ever to burthen thine. 

I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion ; 

Thou needest not fear mine — 
Innocent is the heart's devotion 

"With which I worship thine. 



THE TWO SPIRITS. 

AN ALLEGORY. 
FIRST SPIRIT. 

OTHOTJ who plumed with strong desire 
Wouldst float above the earth, beware ! 
A shadow tracks thy flight of fire — 
Night is coming 1 



240 THE TWO SPIRITS. 



Bright are the regions of the air, 
And among the winds and beams 
It were delight to wander there — 
Night is coming ! 

SECOND SPIRIT. 

The deathless stars are bright above : 
If I would cross the shade of night, 
Within my heart is the lamp of love, 
And that is day ; 
And the moon will shine with gentle light 
On my golden plumes where'er they move ; 
The meteors will linger round my flight, 
And make night day. 

FIRST SPIRIT. 

But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken 
Hail, and lightning, and stormy rain ? 

See, the bounds of the air are shaken — 
The red swift clouds of the hurricane 

Yon declining sun have overtaken, 

The clash of the hail sweeps over the plain — 
Night is coming ! 

SECOND SPIRIT. 

I see the light, and I hear the sound. 

I'll sail on the flood of the tempest dark, 
"With the calm within and the light around 
"Which makes night day : 
And thou, when the gloom is deep and stark. 
Look from thy dull earth, slumber-bound ; 
My moonlike flight thou then mayst mark 
On high, far away. 



SONG OF PROSERPINE. 24 1 



Some say there is a precipice 

Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin 
O'er piles of snow and chasms of ice 
'Mid Alpine mountains ; 
And that the languid storm, pursuing 
That winged shape, for ever flies 

Round those hoar branches, aye renewing 
Its aery fountains. 

Some say, when nights are dry and clear, 

And the death-dews sleep on the morass, 
Sweet whispers are heard by the traveller, 
Which make night day : 
And a silver shape like his early love doth pass, 
Upborne by her wild and glittering hair ; 
And, when he awakes on the fragrant grass, 
He finds night day. 



SONG OF PROSERPINE, 

WHILST GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE PLAIN OF ENNA. 

SACRED Goddess, Mother Earth, 
Thou from whose immortal bosom 
Gods, and men, and beasts have birth, 

Leaf, and blade, and bud, and blossom, 
Breathe thine influence most divine 
On thine own child, Proserpine. 

If with mists of evening dew 
Thou dost nourish these young flowers 
* Q 



242 LETTER TO MARIA GIS BORNE. 



Till they grow in scent and hue 
Fairest children of the Hours, 
Breathe thine influence most divine 
On thine own child, Proserpine. 



LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE. 

Leghorn, 1st July 1820. 

THE spider spreads her webs, whether she be 
In poet's tower, cellar, or barn, or tree ; 
The silk- worm in the dark-green mulberry leaves 
His winding-sheet and cradle ever weaves : 
So I, a thing whom moralists call worm, 
Sit spinning still round this decaying form, 
From the fine threads of rare and subtle thought — 
No net of words in garish colours wrought 
To catch the idle buzzers of the day — 
But a soft cell where, when that fades away, 
Memory may clothe in wings my living name, 
And feed it with the asphodels of fame 
Which in those hearts which must remember me 
Grow, making love an immortality. 

"Whoever should behold me now, I wist, 

Would think I were a mighty mechanist, 

Bent with sublime Archimedean art 

To breathe a soul into the iron heart 

Of some machine portentous, or strange gin, 

Which by the force of figured spells might win 

Its way over the sea, and sport therein — . 



LETTER TO MARIA GIS BORNE. 243 



For round the walls are hung dread engines, such 

As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch 

Ixion or the Titan ; or the quick 

"Wit of that man of God, Saint Dominic, 

To convince atheist, Turk, or heretic ; 

Or those in philanthropic councils met 

Who thought to pay some interest for the debt 

They owed to Jesus Christ for their salvation 

By giving a faint foretaste of damnation 

To Shakespeare, Sydney, Spenser, and the rest 

"Who made our land an island of the blessed 

(When lamp-like Spain, who now relumes her fire 

On Freedom's hearth, grew dim with empire), 

With thumbscrews, wheels with tooth and spike and 

jag. 
Which fishers found under the utmost crag 
Of Cornwall, and the storm-encompassed isles 
Where to the sky the rude sea seldom smiles 
Unless in treacherous wrath, as on the morn 
When the exulting elements in scorn, 
Satiated with destroyed destruction, lay 
Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey, 
As panthers sleep. And other strange and dread 
Magical forms the brick floor overspread. 
Proteus transformed to metal did not make 
More figures, or more strange ; nor did he take 
Such shapes of unintelligible brass, 
Or heap himself in such a horrid mass 
Of tin and iron not to be understood, 
And forms of unimaginable wood, 
To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood : 
Great screws, and cones, and wheels, and grooved 

blocks, 
The elements of what will stand the shocks 



244 LETTER TO MARIA GIS BORNE. 



Of wave and wind and time. — Upon the table 

More knacks and quips there be than I am able 

To catalogise in this verse of mine : 

A pretty bowl of wood — not full of wine, 

But quicksilver ; that dew which the gnomes drink 

When at their subterranean toil they swink, 

Pledging the demons of the earthquake, who 

Eeply to them in lava — cry " Halloo ! " — 

And call out to the cities o'er their head. 

Roofs, towns, and shrines, the dying and the dead, 

Crash through the chinks of earth ; and then all 

quaff 
Another rouse, and hold their sides and laugh. 
This quicksilver no gnome has drunk ; within 
The walnut bowl it lies, veined and thin, 
In colour like the wake of light that stains 
The Tuscan deep when from the moist moon rains 
The inmost shower of its white fire — the breeze 
Is still — blue heaven smiles over the pale seas. 
And in this bowl of quicksilver — for I 
Yield to the impulse of an infancy 
Outlasting manhood — I have made to float 
A rude idealism of a paper boat, 
A hollow screw with cogs : Henry will know 
The thing I mean, and laugh at me. If so 
He fears not I should do more mischief. — Next 
Lie bills and calculations much perplexed 
With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint, 
Traced over them in blue and yellow paint. 
Then comes a range of mathematical 
Instruments, for plans nautical and statical ; 
A heap of rosin ; a queer broken glass 
With ink in it ; a china cup that was 
(What it will never be again, I think) 



LETTER TO MARIA GIS BORNE. 245 



A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink 

The liquor doctors rail at — and which I 

Will quaff in spite of them ; and, when we die, 

We'll toss up who died first of drinking tea, 

And cry out " Heads or tails ! " where'er we be. 

Near that, a dusty paint-box, some old hooks, 

A half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books, 

Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms, 

To great Laplace from Saunderson and Sims, 

Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray 

Of figures — disentangle them who may. 

Baron de Tott's Memoirs beside them lie, 

And some odd volumes of old chemistry. 

Near them a most inexplicable thing, 

With lead in the middle — I'm conjecturing 

How to make Henry understand ; but no ! 

I'll leave, as Spenser says "with many mo," 

This secret in the pregnant womb of Time, 

Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme. 

And here like some weird archimage sit I, 
Plotting dark spells and devilish enginery — 
The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind, 
Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind 
The gentle spirit of our meek Reviews 
Into a powdery foam of salt abuse, 
Ruffling the ocean of their self-content. 
I sit, and smile — or sigh, as is my bent, 
But not for them. Libeccio rushes round 
With an inconstant and an idle sound ; 
I heed him more than them. The thunder-smoke 
Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloak 
Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare ; 
The ripe corn under the undulating air 



246 LETTER TO MARIA GIS BORNE. 



Undulates like an ocean ; and the vines 

Are trembling wide in all their trellised lines ; 

The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill 

The empty pauses of the blast ; the hill 

Looks hoary through the white electric rain ; 

And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain, 

The interrupted thunder howls ; above 

One chasm of heaven smiles, like the eye of Love 

On the unquiet world ; while such things are, 

How could one worth your friendship heed the war 

Of worms — the shriek of the world's carrion jays, 

Their censure or their wonder or their praise ? 

You are not here ! The quaint witch Memory sees 
In vacant chairs your absent images, 
And points where once you sat, and now should be, 
But are not. — I demand if ever we 
Shall meet as then we met — and she replies, 
Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes, 
" I know the past alone : but summon home 
My sister Hope — she speaks of all to come." 
But I, an old diviner who knew well 
Every false verse of that sweet oracle, 
. Turned to the sad enchantress once again, 
And sought a respite from my gentle pain 
In citing every passage o'er and o'er 
Of our communion — How on the sea shore 
We watched the ocean and the sky together, 
Under the roof of blue Italian weather : 
How I ran home through last year's thunder-storm, 
And felt the transverse lightning linger warm 
Upon my cheek ; and how we often made 
Treats for each other where good-will outweighed 
The frugal luxury of our country cheer 



LETTER TO MARIA GIS BORNE. 247 



(As it well might, were it less firm and clear 

Than ours must ever be). And how we spun 

A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun 

Of this familiar life, which seems to be 

But is not — or is but quaint mockery 

Of all we would believe ; or sadly blame 

The jarring and inexplicable frame 

Of this wrong world, and then anatomise 

The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes 

Were closed in distant years ; or widely guess 

The issue of the earth's great business, 

When we shall be as we no longer are 

(Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war 

Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not) ; or how 

You listened to some interrupted flow 

Of visionary rhyme, in joy and pain 

Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain, 

With little skill perhaps ; or how we sought 

Those deepest wells of passion or of thought 

Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years, 

Staining the sacred waters with our tears, 

Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed ; 

Or how I, wisest lady ! then indued 

The language of a land which now is free, 

And, winged with thoughts of truth and majesty 

Flits round the tyrant's sceptre like a cloud, 

And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud, 

" My name is Legion ! " — that majestic tongue 

Which Calderon over the desert flung 

Of ages and of nations, and which found 

An echo in our hearts, and with the sound 

Startled Oblivion. Thou wert then to me 

As is a nurse when inarticulately 

A child would talk as its grown parents do. 



248 LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE. 



If living winds the rapid clouds pursue, 

If hawks chase doves through the aerial way, 

Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their prey, 

Why should not we rouse with the spirit's blast 

Out of the forest of the pathless past 

These recollected pleasures ? 

You are now 
In London ; that great sea whose ebb and flow 
At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore 
Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. 
Yet in its depth what treasures ! You will see 
That which was Godwin — greater none than he ; 
Though fallen, and fallen on evil times, to stand, 
Among the spirits of our age and land, 
Before the dread tribunal of To-come 
The foremost, whilst rebuke cowers pale and dumb. 
You will see Coleridge ; he who sits obscure 
In the exceeding lustre and the pure 
Intense irradiation of a mind 
Which, with its own internal lightning blind, 
Flags wearily through darkness and despair — 
A cloud-encircled meteor of the air, 
A hooded eagle among blinking owls. 
You will see Hunt ; one of those happy souls 
Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom 
This world would smell like what it is — a tomb ; 
Who is what others seem. His room no doubt 
Is still adorned by many a cast from Shout ; 
With graceful flowers tastefully placed about, 
And coronals of bay from ribbons hung, 
And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung, 
The gifts of the most learned among some dozens 
Of female friends, sisters-in-law, and cousins. 
And there is he with his eternal puns, 



LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE. 249 



Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns 

Thundering for money at a poet's door ; 

Alas ! it is no use to say " I'm poor ! " — 

Or oft in graver mood, when he will look 

Things wiser than were ever read in book, 

Except in Shakespeare's wisest tenderness. 

You will see Hogg ; and I cannot express 

His virtues (though I know that they are great), 

Because he locks, then barricades, the gate 

Within which they inhabit. Of his wit 

And wisdom, you'll cry out when you are bit. 

He is a pearl within an oyster-shell, 

One of the richest of the deep. And there 

Is English Peacock, with his mountain fair — 

Turned into a Flamingo, that shy bird 

That gleams i' the Indian air. Have you not heard 

When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo, 

His best friends hear no more of him ? But you » 

Will see him, and will like him too, I hope, 

With the milk-white Snowdonian antelope 

Matched with this camelopard. His fine wit 

Makes such a wound the knife is lost in it ; 

A strain too learned for a shallow age, 

Too wise for selfish bigots — let his page 

Which charms the chosen spirits of the time 

Fold itself up for a serener clime 

Of years to come, and find its recompense 

In that just expectation. Wit and sense, 

Virtue and human knowledge, all that might 

Make this dull world a business of delight, 

Are all combined in Horace Smith. And these 

(With some exceptions, which I need not teaze 

Your patience by descanting on) are all 

You and I know in London. 



250 LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE. 



I recall 
My thoughts, and bid you look upon the night. 
As water does a sponge, so the moonlight 
Fills the void, hollow, universal air. 
"What see you ? Unpavilioned heaven is fair ; 
Whether the Moon, into her chamber gone, 
Leaves midnight to the golden stars, or wan 
Climbs with diminished beams the azure steep ; 
Or whether clouds sail o'er the inverse deep, 
Piloted by the many-wandering blast, 
And the rare stars rush through them, dim and fast. 
All this is beautiful in every land. 
But what see you beside ? A shabby stand 
Of hackney-coaches — a brick house or wall 
Fencing some lonely court, white with the scrawl 
Of our unhappy politics ; or worse — 
A wretched woman reeling by, whose curse, 
Mixed with the watchman's, partner of her trade, 
You must accept in place of serenade, 
Or yellow-haired Pollonia murmuring 
To Henry some unutterable thing. 

I see a chaos of green leaves and fruit 
Built round dark caverns, even to the root 
Of the living stems who feed them, in whose bowers 
There sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers. 
Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn 
Trembles not in the slumbering air ; and, borne 
In circles quaint and ever-changing dance, 
Like winged stars the fire-flies flash and glance, 
Pale in the open moonshine, but each one 
Under the dark trees seems a little sun, 
A meteor tamed, a fixed star gone astray 
From the silver regions of the milky way. 



LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE. 251 



Afar the contadino's song is heard, 
Rude but made sweet by distance, and a bird 
Which cannot be a nightingale, and yet 
I know none else that sings so sweet as it 
At this late hour — and then all is still. 
Now, Italy or London, which you will ! 

Next winter you must pass with me. I'll have 

My house by that time turned into a grave 

01' dead despondence and low-thoughted care, 

And all the dreams which our tormentors are. 

Oh, that Hunt, Hogg, Peacock, and Smith were there, 

With everything belonging to them fair ! 

We will have books, Spanish, Italian, Greek ; 

And ask one week to make another week 

As like his father as I'm unlike mine. 

Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine, 

Yet let's be merry. We'll have tea and toast ; 

Custards for supper ; and an endless host 

Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies, 

And other such lady-like luxuries — 

Feasting on which we will philosophise. 

And we'll have fires out of the Grand Duke's wood, 

To thaw the six weeks' winter in our blood. 

And then we'll talk — what shall we talk about ? 

Oh ! there are themes enough for many a bout 

Of thought-entangled descant ! As to nerves — 

With cones, and parallelograms, and curves 

I've sworn to strangle them if once they dare 

To bother me, when you are with me there ; 

And they shall never more sip laudanum 

From Helicon or Himeros. Well, come, 

And in despair of * * * and of the devil 

We'll make our friendly philosophic revel 



252 ODE TO NAPLES. 



Outlast the leafless time ; till buds and flowers 
Warn the obscure inevitable hours 
Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew — 
"To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.' 



ODE TO NAPLES. 

EPODE i. a. 

I STOOD within the city disinterred ; 
And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls 
Of spirits passing through the streets ; and heard 
The Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals 
Thrill through those roofless halls. 
The oracular thunder penetrating shook 

The listening soul in my suspended blood ; 
I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke — 

I felt, but heard not. Through white columns 
glowed 
The isle-sustaining ocean-flood, 
A plane of light between two heavens of azure. 

Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre, 
Of whose pure beauty Time, as if his pleasure 
Were to spare Death, had never made erasure ; 
But every living lineament was clear 

As in the sculptor's thought, and there 
The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy, and pine, 

Like winter leaves o'ergrown by moulded snow, 
Seemed only not to move and grow 
Because the crystal silence of the air 
Weighed on their life, even as the Power divine 
Which then lulled all things brooded upon mine. 



ODE TO NAPLES. 253 



EPODE II, a. 
Then gentle winds arose, 
"With many a mingled close 
Of wild iEolian sound and mountain odour keen. 
And where the Baian ocean 
"Welters, with air-like motion, 
Within, above, around its bowers of starry green, 
Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves, 
Even as the ever stormless atmosphere 
Floats o'er the elysian realm, 
It bore me (like an angel, o'er the waves 
Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air 
No storm can overwhelm). 
I sailed where ever flows 
Under the calm serene 
A spirit of deep emotion 

From the unknown graves 
Of the dead kin^s of melody. 
Shadowy Aornos darkened o'er the helm 
The horizontal ether ; heaven stripped bare 
Its depths over Elysium, where the prow 
Made the invisible water wjiite as snow ; 
From that Typhsean mount, Inarime, 

There streamed a sunlit vapour, like the standard 
Of some ethereal host ; 

"Whilst from all the coast, [wandered 

Louder and louder, gathering round, there 
Over the oracular woods and divine sea 
Prophesy in gs which grew articulate — 
They seize me — I must speak them — be they fate ! 

strophe 1. a. 

Naples ! thou heart of men which ever pantest 

Naked beneath the lidless eye of heaven ! 



254 ODE TO NAPLES. 



Elysian City, which to calm enchantest 
The mutinous air and sea — they round thee, even 
As Sleep round Love, are driven ! 
Metropolis of a ruined paradise 

Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained ! 
Bright altar of the bloodless sacrifice 

Which armed Victory offers up unstained 
To Love the flower-enchained ! 
Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be, 
Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free, 
If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail — 
Hail, nail, all hail ! 

STROPHE II. 6. 

Thou youngest giant birth 
"Which from the groaning earth 
Leap'st, clothed in armour of impenetrable scale ! 
Last of the intercessors 
Who 'gainst the crowned transgressors 
Pleadest before God's love ! arrayed in wisdom's mail, 
Wave thy lightning lance in mirth ; 
Nor let thy high heart fail, 
Though from their hundred gates the leagued 

oppressors 
With hurried legions move ! Hail, hail, all hail ! 

ANTISTROPHB I. a. 

What though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme 

Freedom and thee ? Thy shield is as a mirror 
To make their blind slaves see, and with fierce gleam 
To turn his hungry sword upon the wearer ; 
A new Action's error 
Shall theirs have been — devoured by their own 
hounds ! 



ODE TO NAPLES. 255 



Be thou like the imperial basilisk, 
Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds ! 
Gaze on Oppression, till, at that dread risk 
Aghast, she pass from the earth's disk ; 
Fear not, but gaze — for freemen mightier grow, 
And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe. 
If Hope, and Truth, and Justice may avail, • 
Thou shalt be great — All hail ! 

ANTISTROPHE II. I. 

From Freedom's form divine, 
From Nature's inmost shrine, 
Strip every impious gawd, rend error veil by veil : 
O'er Ruin desolate, 
O'er Falsehood's fallen state, 
Sit thou sublime, unawed ; be the Destroyer pale ! 
And equal laws be thine, 
And winged words let sail, 
Freighted with truth even from the throne of God ! 
That wealth, surviving fate, be thine. — All hail ! 

STROPHE III. c. 

Didst thou not start to hear Spain's thrilling psean 

Fl-om land to land re-echoed solemnly, 
Till silence became music ? From the Man 

To the cold Alps, eternal Italy 

Starts to hear thine ! The sea 
"Which paves the desert streets of Venice laughs 

In light and music ; widowed Genoa wan, 
By moonlight, spells ancestral epitaphs, 

Murmuring, " Where is Doria ? " fair Milan, . 
Within whose veins long ran 
The viper's palsying venom, lifts her heel 
To bruise his head. The signal and the seal 



256 ODE TO NAPLES. 



(If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail) 
Art thou of all these hopes. — Oh hail ! 

strophe iv. d. 
Florence, beneath the sun, 
Of cities fairest one, 
Blushes within her bower for freedom's expectation : 
From eyes of quenchless hope 
Home tears the priestly cope, 
As ruling once by power, so now by admiration — 
An athlete stripped to run 
From a remoter station 
For the high prize lost on Philippi's shore — 
As then Hope, Truth, and Justice, did avail, 
So now may Fraud and Wrong ! Oh hail ! 

epode i. b. 
Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms, 

Arrayed against the ever-living gods ? 
The crash and darkness of a thousand storms 
Bursting their inaccessible abodes 
Of crags and thunder-clouds ? 
See ye the banners blazoned to the day, 

Inwrought with emblems of barbaric pride ? 
Dissonant threats kill silence far away ; 

The serene heaven which wraps our Eden wide 
With iron light is dyed. 
The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions, 

Like chaos o'er creation, uncreating ; 
An hundred tribes nourished on strange religions 
And lawless slaveries. Down the aerial regions 
Of the white Alps, desolating, 
Famished wolves that bide no waiting, 
Blotting the glowing footsteps of old glory, 



ODE TO NAPLES. 257 



Trampling our columned cities into dust, 
Their dull and savage lust 
On beauty's corse to sickness satiating — 
They come ! The fields they tread look black and 
hoary 
With fire — from their red feet the streams run gory! 

EPODE II. C. 

Great Spirit, deepest love, 
Which rulest and dost move 
All things which live and are within the Italian shore; 
Who spreadest heaven around it, 
Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it ; 
Who sittest in thy star, o'er ocean's western floor ! 
Spirit of Beauty, at whose soft command 

The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison 
From the earth's bosom chill ! 
Oh bid those beams be each a blinding brand 
Of lightning ! bid those showers be dew of poison ! 
Bid the earth's plenty kill ! 
Bid thy bright heaven above, 

Whilst light and darkness bound it, 
Be their tomb who planned 
To make it ours and thine ! 
Or with thine harmonising ardours fill 

And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone horizon 
Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fire ! 
Be man's high hope and unextinct desire 
The instrument to work thy will divine ! 

Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from 
leopards, 
And frowns and fears from thee, 
Would not more swifty flee 
Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds. 



258 SUMMER AND WINTER. 



Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine 
Thou yieldest or withholdest, oh let be 
The City of thy worship ever free I 

25th August 1820. 



SUMMER AND WINTER. 

IT was a bright and cheerful afternoon, 
Towards the end of the sunny month of June, 
When the north wind congregates in crowds 
The floating mountains of the silvery clouds 
From the horizon, and the stainless sky 
Opens beyond them like eternity. 
All things rejoiced beneath the sun — the weeds, 
The river, and the cornfields, and the reeds, 
The willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze, 
And the firm foliage of the larger trees. 

It was a Winter such as when birds die 
In the deep forests ; and the fishes lie 
Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes 
Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes 
A wrinkled clod as hard as brick ; and when, 
Among their children, comfortable men 
Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold : 
Alas then for the homeless beggar old ! 

-,*=» *ilr .t. ilr^t- 



LINES TO A REVIEWER. 259 



LINES TO A REVIEWER. 

ALAS ! good friend, what profit can you see 
In hating such a hateless thing as me ? 
There is no sport in hate, where all the rage 
Is on one side. In vain would you assuage 
Your frowns upon an unresisting smile, 
In which not even contempt lurks, to beguile 
Your heart by some faint sympathy of hate. 
Oh ! conquer what you cannot satiate : 
For to your passion I am far more coy 
Than ever yet was coldest maid or boy 
In winter noon. Of your antipathy 
If I am the Narcissus, you are free 
To pine into a sound with hating me. 



AUTUMN. 



A DIRGE. 



THE warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, 
The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are 
dying, 

And the Year 
On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, 
Is lying. 
Come, Months, come away, 
From November to May, 
In your saddest array ; 
Follow the bier 
Of the dead cold Year, 
And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre. 



2 6o LIBERTY. 



The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling, 
The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling 

For the Year ; 
The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone 
To his dwelling. 

Come, Months, come away ; 

Put on white, black, and grey ; 

Let your light sisters play — 

Ye, follow the bier 

Of the dead cold Year, 
And make her grave green with tear on tear. 



LIBERTY. 

1. r T^HE fiery mountains answer each other, 

X Their thunderings are echoed from zone to 
zone ; 
The tempestuous oceans awake one another, 

And the ice-rocks are shaken round "Winter's 

throne, 
When the clarion of the Typhoon is blown. 

2. From a single cloud the lightning flashes, 

Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around ; 
Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes, [sound 
An hundred are shuddering and tottering — the 
Is bellowing underground. 

3. But keener thy gaze than the lightning's glare, 

And swifter thy step than the earthquake's 
tramp ; 



THE TOWER OF FAMINE. 261 



Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean ; thy stare 

Makes blind the volcanoes ; the sun's bright 
lamp 
To thine is a fen-fire damp. 

4. From billow, and mountain, and exhalation 

The sunlight is darted through vapour and 
blast ; 
From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation, 
From city to hamlet, thy dawning is cast — 
And tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night 
In the van of the morning light. 



THE TOWER OF FAMINE. 

AMID the desolation of a city 
Which was the cradle and is now the grave 
Of an extinguished people, so that Pity 

Weeps o'er the shipwrecks of oblivion's wave, 
There stands the Tower of Famine. It is built 

Upon some prison-homes, whose dwellers rave 
For bread, and gold, and blood : Pain linked to Guilt 

Agitates the light flame of their hours, 
Until its vital oil is spent or spilt. 

There stands the pile, a tower amid the towers 
And sacred domes, each marble-ribbed roof, 

The brazen -gated temples, and the bowers 
Of solitary wealth. The tempest-proof 

Pavilions of the dark Italian air 
Areby its presence dimmed — they stand aloof, 

And are withdrawn — so that the world is bare — 



262 GOOD-NIGHT. 



As if a spectre, wrapped in shapeless terror, 

Amid a company of ladies fair 
Should glide and glow, till it became a mirror 

Of all their beauty — and their hair and hue, 
The life of their sweet eyes with all its error, 

Should be absorbed till they to marble grew. 



GOOD-NIGHT. 

G< 
Which severs those it should unite 
Let us remain together still — 

Then it will be good night. 

How were the night without thee good, 

Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight % 
Be it not said, thought, understood — 
Then it will be good night. 

The hearts that on each other beat 

From evening close to morning light 

Have nights as good as they are sweet, 

But never say " good-night." 



TIME LONG PAST. 

LIKE the ghost of a dear friend dead 
Is time long past. 
A tone which is now forever fled, 
A hope which is now forever past, 



SONNET. 263 



A love so sweet it could not last, 

Was time long past. 

There were sweet dreams in the night 
Of time long past : 
And, was it sadness or delight, 
Each day a shadow onward cast 
Which made us wish it yet might last- 
That time long past. 

There is regret, almost remorse, 

For time long past. 

'Tis like a child's beloved corse 

A father watches, till at last 

Beauty is like remembrance cast 

From time long past. 



SONNET. 

YE hasten to the dead : what seek ye there, 
Ye restless thoughts and busy purposes 
Of the idle brain, which the world's livery wear ? 

thou quick heart, which pantest to possess 
All that anticipation feigneth fair — 

Thou vainly curious mind which wouldest guess 
Whence thou didst come and whither thou mayst go, 
And that which never yet was known wouldst know — 

Oh ! whither hasten ye, that thus ye press 

With such swift feet life's green and pleasant path, 
Seeking alike from happiness and woe 

A refuge in the cavern of grey death ? [thou 

heart, and mind, and thoughts ! what thing dost 
Hope to inherit in the grave below ? 



ADONAIS; 

AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS 



1. T WEEP for Adonais— he is dead ! 

X Oh ! weep for Adonais, though our tears 
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head ! 
And thou, sad Hour selected from all years 
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, 
And teach them thine own sorrow ! Say: "With 
me 
Died Adonais ! Till the future dares 
Forget the past, his fate and fame shall be 
An echo and a light unto eternity." 

2. Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, 

When thy son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies 
In darkness ? Where was lorn Urania 
When Adonais died ? With veiled eyes, 
'Mid listening Echoes, in her paradise 
She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath, 

Rekindled all the fading melodies 
With which, like flowers that mock the corse 
beneath, 
He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of Death. 



ADONAIS. 265 



3. Oh ! weep for Adonais — he is dead ! 

Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep ! — 
Yet wherefore ? Quench within their burning bed 

Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep, 

Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep ; 
For he is gone where all things wise and fair 

Descend. Oh ! dream not that the amorous deep 

Will yet restore him to the vital air ; [despair. 

Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our 

4. Most musical of mourners, weep again ! 

Lament anew, Urania ! — He died 
Who was the sire of an immortal strain, 

Blind, old, and lonely, when his country's pride 
The priest, the slave, and the liberticide, 
Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite 

Of lust and blood. He went unterrified 
Into the gulf of death ; but his clear sprite 
Yet reigns o'er earth, the third among the Sons of 
Light. 

5. Most musical of mourners, weep anew ! 

Not all to that bright. station dared to climb ; 
And happier they their happiness who knew, 

Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time 
In which suns perished. Others more sublime, 
Struck by the envious wrath of man or god, 

Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime ; 
And some yet live, treading the thorny road 
Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene 
abode. 

6. But now thy youngest, dearest one has perished, 

The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew, 



266 ADONAIS. 



Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished. 

And fed with true-love tears instead of dew. 

Most musical of mourners, weep anew ! 
Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last, 

The bloom whose petals, nipped before they blew. 
Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste ; 
The broken lily lies — the storm is over] 



r . To that high Capital where kingly Death 
Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay 
He came ; and bought, with price of purest breath, 
A grave among the eternal. — Come away ! 
Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day 
Is yet his fitting charnel-roof, while still 

He lies as if in dewy sleep he lay. 
Awake him not ! surely he takes his fill 
Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill. 

I. He will awake no more, oh never more ! 

Within the twilight chamber spreads apace 
The shadow of white Death, and at the door 
Invisible Corruption waits to trace 
His extreme way to Irer dim dwelling-place ; 
The Eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe 

Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface 
So fair a prey, till darkness and the law 
Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw 

). Oh weep for Adonais ! — The quick Dreams, 
The passion-winged ministers of thought, 
Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams 
Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught 
The love which was its music, wander not — 



ADONAIS. 267 



"Wander no more from kindling brain to brain, 
But droop there whence they sprung ; and mourn 
their lot 
Round the cold heart where, after their sweet pain, 
They ne'er will gather strength or find a home again. 

10. And one with trembling hand clasps his cold head, 

And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries, 
" Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead ! 
See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes, 
Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies 
A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain." 
Lost angel of a ruined paradise ! 
She knew not 'twas her own — as with no stain 
She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain. 

11. One from a lucid urn of starry dew 

Washed his light limbs, as if embalming them ; 
Another dipt her profuse locks, and threw 

The wreath upon him, like an anadem 

Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem ; 
Another in her wilful grief would break 

Her bow and winged, reeds, as if to stem 

A greater loss with one which was more weak, 

And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek. 

12. Another Splendour on his mouth alit, 

That mouth whence it was wont to draw the 
breath 
Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit, 

And pass into the panting heart beneath 

With lightning and with music ; the damp death 
Quenched its caress upon his icy lips ; 

And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath 



268 ADONAIS. 



Of moonlight vapour which the cold night clips, 
It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its 
eclipse. 

13. And others came — Desires and Adorations, 

Winged Persuasions, and veiled Destinies, 
Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering incar- 
nations 
Of Hopes and Fears, and twilight Fantasies. 
And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs, 
And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam 

Of her own dying smile instead of eyes, 
Came in slow pomp — the moving pomp might seem 
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream. 

14. All he had loved, and moulded into thought 

From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound, 
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought 

Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound, 

Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground, 
Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day ; 

Afar the melancholy Thunder moaned, 
Pale Ocean in uncpriet slumber lay, [dismay. 

And the wild Winds flew round, sobbing in their 

15. Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains, 

And feeds her grief with his remembered lay, 
And will no more reply to winds or fountains, 
Or amorous birds perched on the young green 

spray, 
Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day ; 
Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear 

Than those for whose disdain she pined away 
Into a shadow of all sounds — a drear 
Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear. 



ADO NATS. 269 



16. Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw 

down 
Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were, 
Or they dead leaves ; since her delight is flown, 
For whom should she have waked the sullen 

Year? 
To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear, 
Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both 

Thou, Adonais ; wan they stand and sere 
Amid the faint companions of their youth, 
With dew all turned to tears — odour, to sighing 
ruth. 

17. Thy spirit's sister, the lorn nightingale, 

Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain ; 
Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale 

Heaven, and could nourish in the sun's domain 

Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain, 
Soaring and screaming round her empty nest, 

As Albion wails for thee : the curse of Cain 
Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast, 
And scared the angel song that was its earthly guest ! 

18. Ah woe is me ! "Winter is come and gone, 

But grief returns with the revolving year. 
The airs and streams renew their joyous tone ; 
The ants, the bees, the swallows, re-appear ; 
Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Season's 
bier ; 
The amorous birds now pair in every brake, 

And build their mossy homes in field and brere ; 
And the green lizard and the golden snake, 
Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake. 



27o ADONAIS. 



19. Through wood, and stream, and field, and hill, and 

ocean, 
A quickening life from the Earth's heart has 
burst, 
As it has ever done, with change and motion, 
From the great morning of the world when first 
God dawned on chaos. In its steam immersed, 
The lamps of heaven flash with a softer light ; 

All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst, 
Diffuse themselves, and spend in love's delight 
The beauty and the joy of their renewed might. 

20. The leprous corpse, touched by this spirit tender, 

Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath : 
Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour 

Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death, 

And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath. 
Nought we know dies : shall that alone which knows 

Be as a sword consumed before the sheath 
By sightless lightning ? The intense atom glows 
A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose. 

21. Alas that all we loved of him should be, 

But for our grief, as if it had not been, 
And grief itself be mortal ! "Woe is me ! 

Whence are we, and why are we ? of what scene 
The actors or spectators ? Great and mean 
Meet massed in death, who lends what life must 
borrow. 
As long as skies are blue and fields are green, 
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, 
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to 
sorrow. 



ADONAIS. 271 



22. Re will awake no more, oh, never more ! 

"Wake thou," cried Misery, " childless Mother ! 
Kise 
Out of thy sleep, and slake in thy heart's core 
A wound more fierce than his, with tears and 

sighs." 
And all the Dreams that watched Urania's eyes, 
And all the Echoes whom their Sister's song 
Had held in holy silence, cried, "Arise ! " 
Swift as a thought by the snake memory stung, 
From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung. 

23. She rose like an autumnal Night that springs 

Out of the east, and follows wild and drear 
The golden Day, which, on eternal wings, 

Even as a ghost abandoning a bier, 

Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear 
So struck, so roused, so rapt, Urania ; 

So saddened round her like an atmosphere 
Of stormy mist ; so swept her on her way, 
Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay. 

24. Out of her secret paradise she sped, 

Through camps and cities rough with stone and 
steel 
And human hearts, which, to her aery tread 
Yielding not, wounded the invisible 
Palms of her tender feet where'er they fell. 
And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than 
they, 
Rent the soft form they never could repel, 
Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May, 
Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way. 



272 ADONAIS. 



25. In the death- chamber for a moment Death, 

Shamed by the presence of that living might, 
Blushed to annihilation, and the breath 
Revisited those lips, and life's pale light, 
Flashed through those limbs so late her dear 
delight. 
" Leave me not wild, and drear, and comfortless, 

As silent lightning leaves the starless night ! 
Leave me not ! " cried Urania. Her distress 
Roused Death : Death rose and smiled, and met her 
vain caress. 

26. " Stay yet awhile ! speak to me once again ! 

Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live ! 
And in my heartless breast and burning brain 
That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else 

survive, 
With food of saddest memory kept alive, 
Now thou art dead, as if it were a part 
Of'thee, my Adonais ! I would give 
All that I am, to be as thou now art — 
But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart. 

27. "0 gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, 

Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men 

Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty 

heart 

Dare the unpastured dragon in his den ? 

Defenceless as thou wert, oh ! where was then 

Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear ? — 

Or, hadst thou waited the full cycle when 
Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere, 
The monsters of life's waste had fled from thee like 
deer. 



ADOAAIS. 273 



28. "The herded wolves bold only to pursue, 

The obscene ravens clamorous o'er the dead, 
The vultures to the conqueror's banner true, 
"Who feed where desolation first has fed, 
And whose wings rain contagion — how they fled, 
When, like Apollo from his golden bow, 

The Pythian of the age one arrow sped, 
And smiled ! — The spoilers tempt no second blow, 
They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying 
low. 

29. " The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn ; 

He sets, and each ephemeral insect then 
Is gathered into death without a dawn, 

And the immortal stars awake again. 

So is it in the world of living men : 
A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight 

Making earth bare and veiling heaven ; and, when 
It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light 
Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's awful night." 

SO. Thus ceased she : and the Mountain Shepherds 
came, 
Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent. 
The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame 
Over his living head like heaven is bent, 
An early but enduring monument, 
Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song 

In sorrow. From her wilds Ierne sent 
The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong, 
And love taught grief to fall like music from his tongue. 

31. 'Midst others of less note came one frail form, 
A phantom among men, companionless 



274 ADONAIS. 



As the last cloud of an expiring storm 

Whose thunder is its knell. He, as I guess, 
Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness 

Actseon-like ; and now he fled astray 

With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, 

And his own thoughts along that rugged way 
Pursued like raging hounds their father and their prey. 

32. A pard-like Spirit beautiful and swift — 

A love in desolation masked — a power 
Girt round with weakness ; it can scarce uplift 
The weight of the superincumbent hour. 
It is a dying lamp, a falling shower, 
A breaking billow — even whilst we speak 

Is it not broken ? On the withering flower 
The killing sun smiles brightly : on a cheek 
, The life can burn in blood even while the heart may 
break. 

33. His head was bound with pansies overblown, 

And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue ; 
And a light spear topped with a cypress cone, 

Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew 

Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew, 
Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart 

Shook the weak hand that grasped it. Of that crew 
He came the last, neglected and apart ; 
A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter's dart. 

34. All stood aloof, and at his partial moan 

Smiled through their tears. Well knew that 
gentle band 
Who in another's fate now wept his own. 
As in the accents of an unknown land 



A DO NATS. 275 



He sang new sorrow, sad Urania scanned 
The Stranger's mien, and murmured, "Who art 
thou ? " 
He answered not, but with a sudden hand 
Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow, 
"Which was like Cain's or Christ's — Oh ! that it should 
be so ! 

35. What softer voice is hushed over the dead ? 

Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown ? 
What form leans sadly o'er the white death-bed, 
In mockery of monumental stone, 
The heavy heart heaving without a moan ? 
If it be he who, gentlest of the wise, 

Taught, soothed, loved, honoured, the departed 
one, 
Let me not vex with inharmonious sighs 
The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice. 

36. Our Adonais has drunk poison — oh ! 

What deaf and viperous murderer could crown 
Life's early cup with such a draught of woe ? 

The nameless worm would now itself disown ; 

It felt, yet could escape, the magic tone 
Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and wrong, 

But what was howling in one breast alone, 
Silent with expectation of the song 
Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung. 

37. Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame ! 

Live ! fear no heavier chastisement from me, 
Thou noteless blot on a remembered name ! 
But be thyself, and know thyself to be ! 
And ever at thy season be thou free 



276 ADONAIS. 



To spill the venom when thy fangs o'erflow ; 

Remorse and self-contempt shall cling to thee, 
Hot shame shall burn upon thy secret brow, 
And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt — as now. 

38. Nor let us weep that our delight is fled 

Far from these carrion -kites that scream below. 
He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead ; 
Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now. 
Dust to the dust : but the poor spirit shall flow 
Back to the burning fountain whence it came, 
A portion of the Eternal, which must glow 
Through time and change, unquenchably the same, 
Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of 
shame. 

39. Peace, peace ! he is not dead, he doth not sleep ! 

He hath awakened from the dream of life. 
'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep 
With phantoms an unprofitable strife, 
And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife 
Invulnerable nothings. We decay 

Like corpses in a charnel ; fear and grief 
Convulse us and consume us day by day, 
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living 
clay. 

40. He has outsoared the shadow of our night. 

Envy and calumny, and hate and pain 
And that unrest which men miscall delight, 

Can touch him not and torture not again. 

From the contagion of the world's slow stain 
He is secure ; and now can never mourn 

A heart grown cold, a head grown grey, in vain — 



ADONAIS. 277 



Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, 
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. 

41. He lives, he wakes — 'tis Death is dead, not he ; 

Mourn not for Adonais. — Thou young Dawn, 
Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee 
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone ! 
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan ! 
Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains ! and, thcu 
Air, 
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst 
thrown 
O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare 
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair ! 

42. He is made one with Nature. There is heard 

His voice in all her music, from the moan 
Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird. 

He is a presence to be felt and known 

In darkness and in light, from herb and stone ; 
Spreading itself where'er that Power may move 

Which has withdrawn his being to its own, 
Which wields the world with never-wearied love, 
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. 

43. He is a portion of the loveliness 

Which once he made more lovely. He doth bear 
His part, while the One Spirit's plastic stress 

Sweeps through the dull dense world ; compelling 
there 

All new successions to the forms they wear ; 
Torturing the unwilling dross, thatche.cks its flight, 

To its own likeness, as each mass may bear ; 



278 ADONAIS. 



And bursting in its beauty and its might 
From trees, and beasts, and men, into the heaven's 
light. 

44. The splendours of the firmament of time 

May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not ; 
Like stars to their appointed height they climb, 
And death is a low mist which cannot blot 
The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought 
Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, 

And love and life contend in it for what 
Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there, 
And move like winds of light on dark and stormy 
air. 

45. The inheritors of unfulfilled renown [thought 

Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal 
Far in the unapparent. Chatterton 

Rose pale, his solemn agony had not 

Yet faded from him ; Sidney, as he fought, 
And as he fell, and as he lived and loved, 

Sublimely mild, a spirit without spot, 
Arose : and Lucan, by his death approved ; 
Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved. 

46. And many more, whose names on earth are dark, 

But whose transmitted effluence cannot die 
So long as fire outlives the parent spark, 

Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. 

" Thou art become as one of us," they cry ; 
" It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long 

Swung blind in unascended majesty, 
Silent alone amid an heaven of song. 
Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng ! " 



ADONAIS. 279 



47. Who mourns for Adonais ? Oh ! come forth, 

Fond wretch, and know thyself and him aright 
Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous earth ; 
As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light 
Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might 
Satiate the void circumference : then shrink 

Even to a point within our day and night ; 
And keep thy heart light, lest it make thee sink, 
When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the 
brink. 

48. Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre, 

Oh, not of him, but of our joy. 'Tis nought 
That ages, empires, and religions there 

Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought ; 

For such as he can lend — they borrow not 
Glory from those who made the world their prey ; 

And he is gathered to the kings of thought 
Who waged contention with their time's decay, 
And of the past are all that cannot pass away. 

49. Go thou to Rome — at once the paradise, 

The grave, the city, and the wilderness j 
And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise 

And flowering weeds and fragrant copses dress 

The bones of Desolation's nakedness, 
Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead 

Thy footsteps to a slope of green access, 
Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead 
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread. 

50. And grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time 

Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand ; 



28o ADONAIS. 



And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime, 
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned 
This refuge for his memory, doth stand 
Like flame transformed to marble ; and beneath 

A field is spread, on which a newer band 
Have pitched in heaven's smile their camp of death, 
Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished 
breath. 

51. Here pause. These graves are all too young as yet 

To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned 
Its charge to each ; and, if the seal is set 

Here on one fountain of a mourning mind, 

Break it not thou ! too surely shalt thou find 
Thine own well full, if thou returnest home, 

Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind 
Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. 
What Adonais is why fear we to become ? 

52. The One remains, the many change and pass ; 

Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows 

fly; 

Life, like a dome of many- coloured glass, 
Stains the white radiance of eternity, 
Until Death tramples it to fragments. — Die, 

If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek ! { 
Follow where all is fled ! — Rome's azure sky, 

Flowers, ruins, statues, music — words are weak 
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak. 



53. Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my heart ? 
Thy hopes are gone before : from all things here 
They have departed ; thou shouldst now depart I 
A light is past from the revolving year, 



ADONAIS. 281 



And man and woman ; and what still is dear 
Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither. 

The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near : 
Tis Adonais calls ! Oh, hasten thither ! 
No more let life divide what death can join together. 

iii. That light whose smile kindles the universe, 

That beauty in which all things work and move, 
That benediction which the eclipsing curse 
Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love 
Which, through the web of being blindly wove 
By man, and beast, and earth, and air, and sea, 

Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of 
The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me, 
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. 

55. The breath whose might I have invoked in song 
Descends on me ; my spirit's bark is driven 
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng 
Whose sails were never to the tempest given. 
The massy earth and sphered skies are riven ! 
I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar ! 

Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of heaven, 
The soul of Adonais, like a star, 
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. 




POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821. 



DIRGE FOR THE YEAR. 

ORPHAN Hours, the Year is dead ! 
Come and sigh, come and weep ! " 
" Merry Hours, smile instead, 
For the Year is but asleep : 
See, it smiles as it is sleeping, 

Mocking your untimely weeping." 

"As an earthquake rocks a corse 

In its coffin in the clay, 
So white Winter, that rough nurse, 

Rocks the dead-cold Year to-day ; 
Solemn Hours ! wail aloud 
For your Mother in her shroud. " 

' ' As the wild air stirs and sways 
The tree-swung cradle of a child, 

So the breath of these rude Days 
Rocks the Year. Be calm and mild, 

Trembling Hours ; she will arise 

With new love within her eyes. 



TO NIGHT. 283 



c ' January grey is here, 
Like a sexton by her grave ; 

February bears the bier ; 
March with grief doth howl and rave ; 

And April weeps — but 0, ye Hours ! 

Follow with May's fairest flowers." 



1st January 1821, 



TO NIGHT. 

1. C^WIFTLY walk over the western wave, 
O Spirit of Night ! 

Out of the misty eastern cave 
"Where, all the long and lone daylight, 
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear 
Which make thee terrible and dear, 
Swift be thy flight ! 

2. "Wrap thy form in a mantle grey, 

Star-inwrought, 
Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day ; 
Kiss her until she be wearied out. 
Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land 
Touching all with thine opiate wand — 

Come, long-sought ! 

3. When I arose and saw the dawn, 

I sighed for thee ; 
When light rode high, and the dew was gone, 
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree, 



284 FROM THE ARABIC. 



And the weary Day turned to her rest 
Lingering like an unloved guest, 
I sighed for thee. 

4. Thy brother Death came, and cried, 

"Would' st thou me?" 
Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed, 

Murmured like a noontide bee, 
" Shall I nestle near thy side ? 
Wouldst thou me ? " — And I replied, 
" No, not thee." 

5. Death will come when thou art dead, 

Soon, too soon — 
Sleep will come when thou art fled. 
Of neither would I ask the boon 
I ask of thee, beloved Night — 
Swift be thine approaching flight, 
Come soon, soon ! 



FROM THE ARABIC 

AN IMITATION. 

MY faint spirit was sitting in the light 
Of thy looks, my love ; 
It panted for thee like the hind at noon 
For the brooks, my love. 
Thy barb, whose hoofs outspeed the tempest's fight, 
Bore thee far from me ; 
My heart, for my weak feet were weary soon, 
Did companion thee. 



SONG. 285 



Ah ! fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed, 
Or the death they bear, 
The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove 
With the wings of care ; 
In the battle, in the darkness, in the need, 
Shall mine cling to thee, 
Nor claim one smile for all the comfort, love, 
It may bring to thee. 



SONG. 



RARELY, rarely comest thou, 
Spirit of Delight ! 
Wherefore hast thou left me now 

Many a day and night ? 
Many a weary night and day 
'Tis since thou art fled away. 

How shall ever one like me 

Win thee back again ? 
With the joyous and the free, 

Thou wilt scoff at pain. 
Spirit false ! thou hast forgot 
All but those who need thee not. 

As a lizard with the shade 

Of a trembling leaf, 
Thou with sorrow art dismayed ; 

Even the sighs of grief 
Reproach thee that thou art not near, 
And reproach thou wilt not hear. 



286 SONG, 



4. Let me set my mournful ditty 

To a merry measure — 
Thou wilt never come for pity, 

Thou wilt come for pleasure ; 
Pity then will cut away 
Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay. 

5. I love all that thou lovest, 

Spirit of Delight ! 
The fresh earth in new leaves dressed, 

And the starry night, 
Autumn evening, and the morn 
When the golden mists are born. 

6. I love snow, and all the forms 

Of the radiant frost ; 
I love waves, and winds, and storms — 

Everything almost 
Which is Nature's, and may be 
Untainted by man's misery. 

7. I love tranquil solitude, 

And such society 
As is quiet, wise, and good. 

Between thee and me 
What difference ? But thou dost possess 
The things I seek, not love them less. 

8. I love Love, though he has wings, 

And like light can flee ; 
But above all other things, 

Spirit, I love thee — 
Thou art love and life ! Oh come ! 
Make once more my heart thy home ! 



TO EMILIA VIVIANI. 287 



TO EMILIA VIVIANI. 

MADONNA, wherefore hast thou sent to me 
Sweet-basil and mignonette, 
Embleming love and health, which never yet 
In the same wreath might be ? 
Alas, and they are wet ! 
Is it with thy kisses or thy tears ? 
For never rain or dew 
Such fragrance drew 
From plant or flower. The very doubt endears 
My sadness ever new, 
The sighs I breathe, the tears I shed, for thee. 

March 1821. 



LINES. 



FAR, far away, ye 
Halcyons of Memory ! 
Seek some far calmer nest 
Than this abandoned breast ; 
No news of your false spring 
To my heart's winter bring. 
Once having gone, in vain 

Ye come again. 
Vultures who build your bowers 
High in the future's towers ! 
Withered hopes on hopes are spread : 
Dying joys, choked by the dead, 
Will serve your beaks for prey 
Many a day. 



288 TIME. 



TIME. 

UNFATHOMABLE Sea, whose waves are years ! 
Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe 
Are brackish with the salt of human tears ! 

Thou shoreless flood which in thy ebb and flow 
Claspest the limits of mortality, 
And, sick of prey yet howling on for more, 
Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore 1 
Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm, 
Who shall put forth on thee, 
Unfathomable Sea \ 






Printed by Walter Scott, Felling, Newcastle-on-Tyne. 



LIST OF NEW BOOKS. 



Crown 8vo, Cloth, Bevelled Boards, 3s. 6d. 

Our Queen : A Sketch of the Life and 

Times of Victoria. By the Author of "Grace 
Darling." 

Our American Cousins : Being Personal 

Impressions of the People and Institutions of the 
United States. By W. E. Adams. 

New World Heroes : Lincoln and 

Garfield. By the Author of " Our Queen." 

A Mountain Daisy. By Emily Grace 

Harding. 

Hazel ; or, Perilpoint Lighthouse. By 

the Author of " A Mountain Daisy." 



Crown 8vo, Cloth, Bevelled Boards, 2s. 6d. 

The Life of General Gordon. By the 

Author of " Our Queen." 

The Religious Sentiments of Charles 

Dickens, By C. H. McKenzie. 



LIST OF NEW BOOKS. 



Crown 8vo, Cloth, Bevelled Boards, 2s. 6d. 

W. E, Gladstone : His Life and Work. 

By Lewis Apjohn. 

" A most comprehensive account of Mr. Gladstone's 
political career. It is a painstaking and trustworthy 
compilation." — The London Weekly Dispatch. 

"A very interesting and readable book it will be 
found to be. The book is well written, neatly printed, 
and handsomely bound, and gives promise that the 
series will be a success." — Glasgow Daily Mail. 

The Earl of Beaconsfield : His Life and 

Work. By Lewis Apjohn. 

"A careful, and on the whole an impartial narra- 
tive of the facts in the career of the man it describes. 
. . . The analysis of Lord Beaconsfield's productions 
are especially minute and instructive. An exceedingly 
timeous book." — Scotsman. 

Richard Cobden and the Free Traders. 

By Lewis Apjohn. 

" To those members of the working and trading 
classes who have fallen under the influence of the 
reciprocity craze we recommend, as a corrective, the 
perusal of this cheap volume." — Liverpool Mercury. 

"I find it very interesting." — Rt. Hon. John 
Bright, M.P. 

"A very interesting account of a most important 
movement." — Rt. Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, M.P. 



LIST OF NEW BOOKS. 



Crown 8vo, Cloth, Bevelled Boards, 2s. 6d. 

Life and Explorations of Dr. Living ■ 

stone, the Great Missionary Traveller. By J. S. 
Robertson. 

Life of Robert Moffat, D.D. By Rev. 

William Walters. 

Christian Foreign Missions, on the scale and in , 
the manner in which they are now carried forward by 
the Church of Christ, are characteristic of the nine- 
teenth, century. Among the men sent out to preach 
the gospel to the heathen are some of the greatest and 
best of the age, and some of the most eminent bene- 
factors of the race. Robert Moffat occupied a place in 
the front rank of the missionary band. His history 
was a marvellous illustration of the grandeur and 
power of goodness. 

John Bright and the Peace Party. By 

Lewis Apjohn. 

c ' This is the title of a very interesting biographical 
and historical volume which has just been published, 
the author being Mr. Lewis Apjohn. In its pages are 
furnished an excellent sketch of the seventy years of 
political life, and Mr. Bright's political career is delin- 
eated in a masterly manner." — Nottingham Journal. 

"Written in an easy, popular stjde, is full of 
interest and instruction for all who desire to under- 
stand the political forces in operation around them." 
Liverpool Mercury. 



LIST OF NEW BOOKS. 



Crown 8vo, Cloth, Bevelled Boards, 2s. 6d. 

Life of Grace Darling. By Eva Hope. 



Tales and Sketches of the Covenanters. 



Uncle Tom's Cabin. By Mrs. Harriet 

Beecher Stowe. 



Robinson Crusoe. By Daniel Defoe. 



The Vicar of Wakefield. By Oliver 

Goldsmith. 



The Prince of the House of David. By 

Rev. J. Ingraham. 



The Book of Martyrs. By John Foxe. 
The Pilgrim's Progress and Holy War. 

By John Bunyan. 

Golden Gleams: Selections from 

Beecher. By Rev. J. T. Lloyd. 

Village Tales. By Miss Mitford. 
Famous Engineers of the Nineteenth 

Century. By. J. F. Lay son. 



LIST OF NEW BOOKS. 



NEW SERIES 



BIJOU BOOKS. 

NOW READY, Crown 32mo, Price Sixpence each. 

With Red-Line Border, and beautifully Bound in 
Cloth Limp, Full Gilt Side. 

Cheery Lays for Dreary Days. 



Songs in the House of our Pilgrimage. 



God's Greetings in Nature, and Man's 

Responses. 

Bijou Thoughts for Busy Moments. 



Helpful Counsels for those who wish 

to make Progress in the Life of Holiness. 



Suggestive Thoughts for Meditative 

Minds. 

Sketches by Great Masters, of Scenes, 

Places, and Persons, taken from Standard h uthors. 



LIST OF NEW BOOKS. 



Crown 32mo, price Sixpence each. 

The Compliments of the Season; or, 

Words for all Times. 



The Land o' the Leal. 



On Business Only. Little Illustrations 

and Suggestions regarding Business Qualifications 
and Successes. A Book relating to Work. 



Home Sweet Home. Lyrics and Songs 

on Home and Family Life. 



In Fun and in Earnest. Selections in 

Prose and Verse, chiefly Humorous. 



Golden Sands from the German Ocean 

of Thought. Selections from German Authors, 
Ancient and Modern. 

:)o(: 



In Preparation. 
Two New Text Books uniform with above. 

Bible Thoughts for all Times. 



Golden Thoughts from the New Testa- 
ment. 



LIST OF NEW BOOKS. 



£be Canterbury poets* 

NEW EDITION OF THE POETS, 
Edited by Joseph Skipsey, Author of " Lyric Poems." 

In Shilling Monthly Volumes, Square 8vo, well 
printed on Toned Paper, with Red-Line Border on 
each Page, Strongly Boimd i?i Cloth, with Artistic 
Design on Cover. Each Volume will contain 288 
pages, including an original Introductory Notice, 
biographical and critical, by the Editor. The first 
Volume will be COLERIDGE, followed by Blake, 
Shelley, Poe, Campbell, Chatterton, Long- 
fellow, Marlow {a selection), Ballads, Milton 
(2 vols.), Whittier, Keble, Burns (2 vols.), etc. 

Arrangements have been made to publish a new 
edition of the British and American Poets, in which 
the desirabilities of clear and readable type, excellence 
in quality of paper, handiness in size, and elegancy 
in general get up, will be combined in a way so as to 
render them ornaments to the bookcase, or suitable as a 
series of pocket volumes, while the price at which they 
will be published will place them within the reach of 
every reader, however humble in circumstances. 

In the present issue quantity will also form an 
important part of the attraction. Quality will, first of 
all, be considered, and side by side with a popular poet, 
such as Burns or Longfellow, will at intervals appear a 
Chatterton or a Blake, and one or two others whose 
works have never yet hitherto appeared in a cheap series, 
and scarcely in any series whatever, and the splendour 
of whose genius is only known to a select few. 



LIST OF NEW BOOKS. 



Twelve Double Volumes, Foolscap 8vo, Cloth, Gilt Edges, 
3s. each. Copyright Edition. 

WILSON'S TALES OF THE BORDERS 

AND OF SCOTLAND: 

Historical, Traditionary, and Imaginative. 
Revised by Alexander Leighton. 

X XXJtS \y X £0 X £> JtS JX X Jci £> 

OF is. 6d. REWARD BOOKS. 



CROWN 8vo, CLOTH, GILT EDGES. 

Gypsy Breynton. 
Gypsy's Cousin Joy. 

In which Joy copies to Yorkbury. 

Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. 

Which concerns Gypsy end Tom. 

Gypsy's Year at the Golden Crescent. 

In which Gypsy goes to Boarding -School. 

734 


























s 

































































































5 ^ 






^ 












.O o 







































<p 






^ *+. 






?°c 






- -^ 












LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




